"I come from Des Moines. Somebody had to." And, as soon as Bill Bryson was old enough, he left. Des Moines couldn't hold him, but it did lure him back. After ten years in England he returned to the land of his youth, and drove almost 14,000 miles in search of a mythical small town called Amalgam, the kind of smiling village where the movies from his youth were set. Instead he drove through a series of horrific burgs, which he renamed Smellville, Fartville, Coleslaw, Coma, and Doldrum. At best his search led him to Anywhere, USA, a lookalike strip of gas stations, motels and hamburger outlets populated by obese and slow-witted hicks with a partiality for synthetic fibres. He discovered a continent that was doubly lost: lost to itself because he found it blighted by greed, pollution, mobile homes and television; lost to him because he had become a foreigner in his own country.

'It is easier to know people in small places. Sometimes you can't help knowing them. Like the boy who walks four miles to school; or the elderly gentleman who is up every morning at five o'clock, taking his morning walk (tap-tap-tap, I hear his walking stick below my window); or that busy little woman gathering firewood for the winter; or the man from the nursery who sells me a potted geranium and ends up telling me the story of his life... So many stories waiting to be told! And, as I have discovered, small towns may be smaller than cities, and there may be fewer people living in them, but the stories they provide a writer with are big, they contain worlds upon worlds within them.'

We Heard It When We Were Young tells the story of a young boy, first-generation Mexican American, who is torn between cultures: between immigrant parents trying to acclimate to midwestern life and a town that is, by turns, supportive and disturbingly antagonistic.

This collection of twenty-four short stories focuses on diverse experiences in small Michigan communities during the second half of the twentieth century. It addresses such topics as racial conflict and harmony, white collar crime, college life, family dynamics, tragedy, aspirations of young athletes, growing up, personal rejection, dishonesty in academia, unusual mentors, less than ethical policemen, class conflict, and career triumphs of a twice unhappily married woman. Michigan's Polish, Finnish, Irish, Hispanic, and Asian cultures are highlighted. The stories present the human side of life in American small towns from the relative ease of physical entry into these communities to the psychological difficulty of exit.

A series of fictional short stories about equally fictional people in Carthage, Missouri. Based in the 1950s and 1960s for volume one. Mrs. Courtney didn't like people. At least not in person. She did like people around though, because she was afraid to live alone. So she lived in town, fought with her neighbors, and called the police on a regular basis on Thanksgiving, Christmas, VE day and July 25th.