Old Friends

Old Friends

Ninety-year-old Lou quit school after the eighth grade, worked for the rest of his life, and stayed with the same woman for nearly seventy years. Seventy-two-year-old Joe was chief probation officer in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, holds a law degree, and has faced the death of a son and the raising of a mentally challenged daughter. Now, the two men are roommates in a nursing home. Despite coming from very different backgrounds, the two become close friends.<br /> <br />With an exacting eye for detail, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Tracy Kidder examines end-of-life sorrows, joys, and unexpected surprises with poetry and compassion. Struggling to find meaning in the face of mortality, Joe and Lou experience the challenges that come with aging—with a grace and dignity that’s sure to inspire.<br /><br /><h2>About the Author</h2><br />Author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning 1981 nonfiction book <i>The Soul of a New Machine</i>, detailing the development of the first computers at Data General Corporation, Tracy Kidder is a best-selling literary journalist and Harvard graduate with an MFA from the University of Iowa. He has written several other nonfiction works that have received critical acclaim, including <i>The Road to Yuba City: A Journey Into the Juan Corona Murders</i>; <i>Strength in What Remains</i>, the account of a man who survived the Burundi genocide; and <i>Mountains Beyond Mountains</i>, a biography of physician, anthropologist, and humanitarian Paul Farmer. He was the first A.M. Rosenthal Writer-in-Residence at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy in 2010.