Contemporary Authors

• House of Good Hope: A Promise for a Broken City University of Nebraska Press (Lincoln, NE), 2007
• The Greatest Show ( short stories) Louisiana State University Press (Baton Rouge, LA), 2012

1. The greatest show : stories LCCN 2011037858 Type of material Book Personal name Downs, Michael, 1964- Main title The greatest show : stories / Michael Downs. Published/Created Baton Rouge : Louisiana State University Press, c2012. Description 183 p. ; 22 cm. ISBN 9780807144527 (pbk. : alk. paper) 9780807144534 (epub) 9780807144541 (mobi) 9780807144558 (pdf) Shelf Location FLS2013 008117 CALL NUMBER PS3604.O9524 G74 2012 OVERFLOWA5S Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms (FLS1) CALL NUMBER PS3604.O9524 G74 2012 LANDOVR Copy 2 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms - STORED OFFSITE 2. House of good hope : a promise for a broken city LCCN 2006029420 Type of material Book Personal name Downs, Michael, 1964- Main title House of good hope : a promise for a broken city / Michael Downs. Published/Created Lincoln : University of Nebraska Press, c2007. Description viii, 318 p. ; 22 cm. ISBN 9780803260122 (pbk. : alk. paper) 0803260121 (pbk. : alk. paper) Links Contributor biographical information http://www.loc.gov/catdir/enhancements/fy0705/2006029420-b.html Publisher description http://www.loc.gov/catdir/enhancements/fy0705/2006029420-d.html CALL NUMBER HN80.H37 D68 2007 Copy 1 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms CALL NUMBER HN80.H37 D68 2007 FT MEADE Copy 2 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms - STORED OFFSITE

• The Strange and True Tale of Horace Wells, Surgeon Dentist - May 9, 2018 Acre Books, Long Beach, CA
• Hollywood's Team: Grit, Glamour, and the 1950s Los Angeles Rams - 2016 Rare Bird Books, Los Angeles, CA

• Michael Downs - http://www.michael-downs.net/about.html

  Michael Downs lives in Baltimore, Maryland, with his wife, Sheri Venema, and their dog, Mimsy. He is the author of three books, all set in his hometown of Hartford, Connecticut. His nonfiction and fiction tell stories that often raise questions about the places we live and the communities we create. His first book, House of Good Hope: A Promise for a Broken City (University of Nebraska Press, 2007), combines literary journalism and memoir to tell the stories of five young men he met while working as a newspaper reporter in Hartford. Winner of the River Teeth Prize for Literary Nonfiction, the book explores questions of what people owe the communities that raised them, and how much an individual needs to sacrifice to support that community.

  For his second book, The Greatest Show: Stories (Louisiana State University Press, 2012), Michael turned to fiction to explore the aftermath of the historic Hartford Circus Fire of 1944, which killed 168 people. Beginning with the big top fire itself and following generations over some sixty years, the stories ask about the burdens that come with memories and the solace that comes with forgetting. The book was written with support from a literary fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.

  To write his most recent book, The Strange and True Tale of Horace Wells, Surgeon Dentist, Michael traveled farther back: to 19th-century Hartford and the story of the real-life dentist who introduced general anesthesia to the world. In this novel, Michael mines the gaps in the historical record to imagine the life of Horace Wells who, working with nitrous oxide, performed surgery without pain, ending centuries of human suffering. But Wells's obsession with pain and its destruction ultimately threatened his family, his finances, and his sanity. Acre Books published the novel in May 2018.

  As a speaker or visiting writer, Michael has appeared at the Mark Twain House in Hartford; the Oxford Conference for the Book, and several universities and high schools.

  His freelance articles have appeared in AARP: The Magazine, The Hartford Courant, Baltimore Style, and Baltimore Fishbowl. With author Jim Hock, he worked to research and write Hollywood's Team: Grit, Glamour, and the 1950s Los Angeles Rams (Rare Bird Books, 2016). He also works as a book doctor and as a writing consultant/coach.

  As a journalist, Michael covered everything from sports to crime to government for newspapers in Arizona, Connecticut, Arkansas, and Montana. He has since taught journalism at the University of Montana and the American Indian Journalism Institute. He currently teaches creative writing at Towson University, where he is an associate professor.

  Michael's work has been recognized through awards and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance, the Maryland State Arts Council, and the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation, among others. He is affiliated with Gotham Ghostwriters and is represented by Esmond Harmsworth of Aevitas Creative.

• Amazon -

  Born in Hartford, Connecticut, Michael Downs has written books including HOUSE OF GOOD HOPE: A PROMISE FOR A BROKEN CITY, which won the River Teeth Literary Nonfiction Prize, and THE GREATEST SHOW, a story collection (LSU Press, 2012). His debut novel, THE STRANGE TRUE TALE OF HORACE WELLS, SURGEON DENTIST, will be available in May 2018 from Acre Books.

  With Jim Hock, Downs wrote HOLLYWOOD'S TEAM: GRIT, GLAMOUR AND THE 1950s LOS ANGELES RAMS (Rare Bird, 2016). He has won literary fiction fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Maryland State Arts Council, and he has published stories in the Best American Mystery Stories series (2001, 2002).

  Say hello to Michael through his web site (http://www.michael-downs.net) or find him on Facebook at The Greatest Show: Michael Downs, writer.

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• Towson University Website - https://www.towson.edu/cla/departments/english/facultystaff/mdowns.html

  Michael Downs
  Associate Professor

  Contact Information
  PHONE
  410-704-3695
  OFFICE
  LA 5332
  E-MAIL
  mdowns@towson.edu

  Education
  MFA, University of Arkansas, 1999
  BS, University of Arizona, 1986
  Areas of Expertise
  Creative Writing
  Biography
  Michael Downs teaches courses in fiction and creative nonfiction writing. He is the author of House of Good Hope (University of Nebraska Press), which won the River Teeth Literary Nonfiction Prize. His short stories have been anthologized in High Five, and Points of Contact, and have twice appeared in volumes of Best American Mystery Stories. The Gettysburg Review, The Georgia Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Five Points, Witness and The Missouri Review have also published his fiction, and in 2005 he won a literary fiction fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. He was born in Hartford, Connecticut, where he sets his fiction, following the advice of a mentor who once told him, "we write from where we get the wound."
  Writers who have influenced his work include William Kennedy, Anton Chekhov, Alice Munro, Elizabeth Bishop, William Trevor, Katherine Anne Porter, Gary Smith and Sheri Venema.
  In another life, Downs was a newspaper reporter, covering sports, city and county government, and general assignments. He continues to work as a teacher/editor with the American Indian Journalism Institute and reznet, an online site offering news from Native America.
  After Connecticut, Downs lived in Vermont, Arizona, Arkansas and Montana prior to arriving in Maryland. His house is in the Hamilton neighborhood of Baltimore, near a duckpin bowling alley and a park that has a woods for walking dogs. Downs is a basketball fan who, though nearsighted and slow, plays every week, grateful that a place remains on the court for errant jump shots and goofy black sport goggles.
  Courses SPRING 2018
  ENGL 263 Elements of Fiction
  ENGL 312 Fiction Writing
  ENGL 497 Internship
  ENGL 498 Internship as Capstone

• Poets & Writers website - https://www.pw.org/content/michael_downs

  Michael Downs

  Printable Version
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  Department of English
  Towson University
  Towson, MD 21252

  Phone:
  443.449.5517
  E-mail:
  mdowns@michael-downs.net
  Website:
  michael-downs.net
  Author's Bio
  Michael Downs, a Hartford native, is the author of The Strange and True Tale of Horace Wells, Surgeon Dentist, his debut novel from Acre Books. Earlier works include The Greatest Show: Stories, inspired by the true story of the Hartford, Conn., circus fire, and House of Good Hope: A Promise for a Broken City, named a finalist in memoir for the Connecticut Book Award. He lives in Baltimore, Maryland, and is a professor of English at Towson University.
  Publications and Prizes
  Books:
  House of Good Hope (University of Nebraska Press, 2007), The Greatest Show: Stories (Louisiana State University Press, 2012), The Strange and True Tale of Horace Wells, Surgeon Dentist (Acre Books, 2016)
  Journals:
  Alaska Quarterly Review, Five Points, Georgia Review, Gettysburg Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Missouri Review, New Letters, River Teeth, Sport Literate, Willow Springs, Witness
  Prizes Won:
  NEA literary fellowship in fiction, River Teeth Literary Nonfiction Prize, Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation Fellowship, Maryland State Arts Council grant, Rubys Award
  Reviews, Recordings, and Interviews
  The Greatest Show (blog)
  The Greatest Show: Stories book trailer (video)
  Maryland State Arts Council keynote address (video)
  More Information
  Listed as:
  Creative Nonfiction Writer, Fiction Writer
  Gives readings:
  Yes
  Travels for readings:
  Yes
  Prefers to work with:
  Any
  Fluent in:
  English
  Born in:
  Hartford
  Raised in:
  Tucson, AZ

• Triquarterly - https://www.triquarterly.org/contributors/michael-downs

  Michael Downs’s first book, House of Good Hope (University of Nebraska Press), won the River Teeth Literary Nonfiction Prize. His second book is The Greatest Show (Louisiana State University Press), a collection of linked stories featuring the Hartford Circus Fire of 1944. A former newspaper reporter, he has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Maryland State Arts Council, and the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation. He lives in Baltimore and teaches at Towson University.

• From Publisher -

  Michael Downs, a Hartford native, is the author of House of Good Hope: A Promise for a Broken City, which won the River Teeth Literary Nonfiction Prize. A recipient of a literary fiction fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, he lives in Baltimore, Maryland, and is an assistant professor of English at Towson University.

• Baltimore Fishbowl - https://baltimorefishbowl.com/stories/q-a-michael-downs-horace-wells-surgeon-dentist/

  Q&A with local writer Michael Downs, author of ‘The Strange and True Tale of Horace Wells, Surgeon Dentist’
  By Marion Winik -
  May 3, 2018
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  Before there was virtual reality, there was historical fiction. As lovers of this genre know, its best representatives offer an experience akin to time travel, making the cultural ambiance and physical details of another era almost magically vivid and immersive. One certainly feels this with the work of Michael Downs. He is a native of Hartford, Connecticut, born in 1964, but in each of his works set in that city, he leaves the convincing impression that he might have lived there in other periods, other lives.
  His preceding book, The Greatest Show (2012) is a collection of linked stories centered around a circus fire that occurred in Hartford in 1944, killing 168 spectators at a Ringling Bros. and Bailey matinee, following the aftershocks of the tragedy into the decades ahead. In addition to his uncanny ability to evoke a physical setting using appeals to all our senses, Downs also has a way of showing the understandable and relatable souls of characters who from the outside are anything but Everyman or Everywoman.
  The Strange and True Story of Horace Wells, Surgeon Dentist is based on a historical figure, the19th-century dentist who first explored the use of nitrous oxide gas in dental procedures. Various obstacles prevented him from achieving the recognition that he felt was his due, and before his death at 33 under very unhappy circumstances, he became a traveling salesman of a contraption for bathing, a would-be dealer of European art, and a drug addict. His very loving marriage to an excellent woman named Elizabeth suffered various slings and arrows as well. When she almost died giving birth to their son Charley, he swore that if she lived they would not try to have another child. But for her, life would never be complete without a daughter.
  We caught up with Downs, a professor at Towson University, to ask a few questions.
  The book opens with a nightmarish scene in which Horace, as a young boy, suffocates his mortally ill father to end his suffering. Was there any basis for this in your research? So much of what happens to Wells seems to be based on the historical record. How and when do you decide to add fictional elements?
  Sometimes, I imagine Horace’s ghost visiting me–or I die, and he’s there in whatever afterlife, and he scowls and says, ‘”Why did you write me that way?” And the scene I think he’s most upset about is the one you mention. Because there’s nothing in the historical record that suggests that Horace as a boy mercy-killed his father.
  That scene, though, did come out of principles I set for myself regarding imagination and the historical record. First, I decided I wouldn’t countermand any part of the known historical record. If Horace had one kid, I wasn’t going to give him two. I believed–I still believe–that there are enough gaps in our knowledge of Horace’s life to leave room for imagination to fill those gaps in what I hope is a compassionate and empathetic way.
  Here are the facts:
  • Throughout adulthood, Horace was obsessed with destroying pain.
  • His father died when Horace was 14.
  • When Horace was a boy it was customary, especially in rural areas, that someone sat at all times with a dying family member, including overnight. Usually, it fell to the oldest son to take the overnight shift.
  • Horace was the oldest son.
  So I began to imagine Horace sitting overnight with his dying father, alone with his father’s pain. The rest felt – in its way – possible and compassionate. And it served to explain Horace’s obsession with pain.
  At its heart, this book is about pain, particularly physical suffering, both the enduring of it and the inflicting of it. What has gotten you so interested in that?
  During the years I worked on the book, my mother endured chronic pain–from a variety of sources. I lived far away, a couple of days’ drive at best. But I could see how pain affected her and my family who lived closest: my father, my brother, my sister. Those three bore the brunt of it. To suffer as my mother did changes a person, but it also changes their families. Being part of my mother’s suffering, sometimes from a distance, sometimes up close, informed what I wrote about Horace and his family and about pain.
  How does the 19th century understanding of suffering differ from ours?

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  I asked a historian once, a dental historian, why people subjected themselves to tooth surgery before Horace’s discovery and before general anesthesia. He said that they made a bargain with pain – accepting the intensity of a single extreme moment because it would end an ongoing suffering.
  But Americans in the early 19th century also understood pain to be part of daily life. Every day involved some ache or burn or throbbing. It was the human condition. These days, though pain is still part of the human condition, we seem–or want– to see it as an aberration, a temporary state that ought to be fixed with a pill or surgery. We think we have a right to a pain-free life. Maybe we do. But a 19th-century person wouldn’t have understood that stance.
  To me, your depiction of everyday life, the basics of how people ate, drank, cleaned themselves, communicated, and got around, including traveling by ship or by horse and buggy, are as compelling as the dramatic narrative of the book. How did you get so comfortable in the 19th century? Do you have to research details continually? What’s the process?
  Never ending. For this novel, the research lasted until I hit the send button and mailed it to the publisher. One day, for example, I needed a pistol, and I spent a few hours on eBay looking at early 19th-century pistols for auction, then Googling those for more details.
  I read books written when Horace was alive. I read historians’ books about 19th-century life. I studied paintings painted during those years. I visited a historical society in Connecticut and held Horace’s death mask. When I needed a tooth filled, I asked my dentist to give me nitrous oxide. I spent a day at a tourist site in Massachusetts that recreates an early 19th-century village. When Elizabeth buys comfits late in the novel, it’s because I bought comfits at that tourist village.
  A favorite thing as I wrote the novel was to use the Oxford English Dictionary to see when words came into the language, because I strived not to use any word that didn’t exist in Horace’s time. So you’ll find nothing “snazzy” in the novel, nothing about “dental plaque,” because those came into use later.
  At one point, Wells visits a utopian community, a rural commune of Liberites who have shucked off convention and responsibility to live on the land. Was this based on a real group?
  Not on a particular group, though there were many such around New England and the Northeast at the time. This was all part of what’s known historically as the Second Great Awakening. Ralph Waldo Emerson and Nathaniel Hawthorne, among others, joined these intentional communities that sought to create something close to heaven on earth. But utopian thinkers make me nervous, because some resort to authoritarianism to make their perfect worlds. With the Liberites, I also considered how people who believe they’ve found the best way to live are often–not always, but often–blind to their own flaws. Exceptionalism, whether national or local, also makes me nervous.
  In your acknowledgments, you thank Ron Tanner, Jessica Anya Blau, and Geoff Becker — your writing group, I believe, and what a writing group it is. This column has previously covered Tanner’s Missile Paradise and Blau’s The Trouble With Lexie; no doubt Becker will be giving us something new soon. Tell us a little about this prolific organization. How do these other writers influence you? Do you think you have more sex scenes because of Jessica Blau?
  Those three are wonderful. They were an established writing posse before I moved to Baltimore ten years ago, but they welcomed me and changed everything. It’s like hanging out with Superman, Wonder Woman, and Batman. I get to be Robin–or Green Arrow, somebody like that. They’re such different writers, but they share dedication to story and craft and language. They make me want to write more, and their insights make everything I write better.
  As for the sex scenes, the novel may not have more of them because of Jessica’s influence, but her example gave me more gumption to write the ones that are there. You read Jessica’s books, and you know you have no choice: you have to write the sex. Because life without sex isn’t life, and a novel has to be about life, right? It’s not all pain.
  Join the author for his Baltimore launch on May 10. Details on the Events page of his website, michael-downs.net.

• LA Observed - http://www.laobserved.com/archive/2016/12/the_rams_the_original_hol.php

  The Rams were the original 'Hollywood's Team'
  By David Davis | December 27, 2016 11:10 AM
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  Bob Waterfield, an early Rams star. Photo: LA Public Library.

  The return of the Rams to Southern California, after a 21-season hiatus in St. Louis, has been a disaster. Veteran coach Jeff Fisher presided over an offense that was as stale as a Dodger Dog in December; after tying the NFL mark for most losses by a head coach, Fisher was canned. With one game remaining on the schedule, the Rams’ woeful 4-11 record isn’t indicative of how underachieving they’ve been.
  The first time that the Rams moved to LA, when they came from Cleveland in 1946, went much better. These Rams were ground breakers: they were the first major-league sports franchise west of the Mississippi and the first LA team to win a title (1951). They were the first to field an integrated team, and their roster teemed with Hall of Famers: Elroy “Crazy Legs” Hirsch, Norm Van Brocklin, Dick “Night Train” Lane. One of their star QBs, Bob Waterfield, was married to his high-school sweetheart, actress Jane Russell, from Van Nuys High.
  Author Jim Hock wasn’t alive to watch his father, John, play on the offensive line for the Rams in the 1950s. But after John Hock’s death in 2000, Jim decided to collect stories about his father and the Rams of the 1950s. The result is a winning new book entitled “Hollywood’s Team: Grit, Glamour, and the 1950s Los Angeles Rams” (Rare Bird Books), written with help from Michael Downs. Indeed, any book whose bibliography includes Michael MacCambridge’s “America’s Game,” D.J. Waldie’s “Holy Land” and Jane Russell’s “My Paths and Detours” is sure to be an entertaining read. To mark its publication, LA Observed emailed several questions about the book to Jim Hock.
  LA Observed: Your father made the Pro Bowl as a lineman, but his NFL career was short-lived. Why did you decide to do a book about him?
  Jim Hock: At my dad’s memorial service in 2000 in Southern California, a bunch of his teammates from the Rams were telling my siblings and me war stories about playing in that era. My brother Joe told me to write about them, and 16 years later they now come in the form of this book. We always heard the stories growing up. and I thought this was a good way to pay tribute to people like my dad and his buddies – simple people playing for little money and the love of the game -- who helped build the NFL into what it is today.
  LAO: Your father passed away in 2000. How did you go about reconstructing his career with the Rams?
  JH: I spent a ton of time talking to everyone from former players like Frank Gifford, Art Donovan, Andy Robustelli, Les Richter, their families and people in and around the team. Remember: I started in more than a decade ago on this project that became a labor of love. I also used source material from the Los Angeles Times, game programs, media guides, and census records. I even took a trip to the NFL Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio.
  LAO: Your father and other NFL players didn’t make much money -- most of them had to hold down jobs in the off-season -- but they also seemed to be a integral part of the community, not separate from it. What was your father’s favorite part of living in Southern California?
  JH: My dad moved from Pittsburgh to Los Angeles when he was about 9 years old. It was a classic story: my grandfather worked in a steel mill, but lost his job in the Depression and sought a better life in Southern California. My dad (and my mom) grew up just blocks from the LA Coliseum and loved the area. The weather was number one, but being close to family and a ton of friends was the most important reason. We tried to make the city of Los Angeles of the 1950s come to life as a character in the book to give readers a flavor of what it was like to live in the city at the time, a place filled with promise, glamour and innovation.
  LAO: You write that the Rams were, in many respects, the first modern sports franchise. How so? What made them different from other pro sports teams from that era?
  JH: The Rams of the 1950s were innovators most of all. They were pioneers in the modern passing game, with their head coach, Sid Gillman, being one of the architects of the game that lasts even today. Pete Rozelle was their PR guy and general manager. He went on to become the groundbreaking “boy commissioner” [of the NFL] at age 33 in 1960 and transformed the NFL. Bob Hope was one of the owners, and Hollywood stars flocked to the Coliseum in those days. The Rams were also the first team to integrate, one year before Jackie Robinson joined the Dodgers, and the first team to have its own TV contract.
  LAO: In the book, you write about the specter of the Brooklyn Dodgers moving to Los Angeles in 1958. How did that move affect the Rams and their place in the community?
  JH: You have to remember that Los Angeles was experiencing explosive population growth in the post-World War II 1950s. The Rams were the first team to move west of the Mississippi River, and with regular crowds topping 90,000 people they showed the Dodgers that LA was a viable professional sports town. Roz Wyman, who was a city councilwoman at the time, is a mentor of mine, and I wanted to highlight her role bringing the Dodgers to Los Angeles. The Dodgers and the Rams had a symbiotic relationship for decades before the team moved to St. Louis. Also keep in mind that the Dodgers played in the Coliseum for a few years before Dodger Stadium was built.
  LAO: You live in northern Virginia these days. From your vantage point, what’s wrong with the current Rams team, and how does the franchise turn things around before moving into the new stadium in Inglewood?
  JH: Growing up a Rams fan, I was devastated when the Rams moved to St. Louis. In my opinion, their former owner, Georgia Frontiere, blew it by taking a short-term gain there (as well as when she and her late husband [Carroll Rosenbloom] originally moved the team to Anaheim.) The Rams were meant to be in LA proper because of the great fans and the wide geographic land mass that is the Southland. Fans drove from the far reaches of the San Fernando Valley to get to games when the Rams played in Coliseum. I had uncles who did that. Bringing them back to Los Angeles made perfect sense. Today’s team has some great young talent. They need to hire an innovative coach who will stretch the field and capture the hearts and minds of people of the region who want a high powered and exciting offense. They have a good nucleus and should let quarterback Jared Goff develop and put some tools around him.
  LAO: Since 2015 you’ve been working as Chief of Staff to Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker. What are your plans for the future?
  JH: I’ve been working flat out for four years in public service, so I am looking forward to spending more time with my wife and kids. Serving my country has been one of the greatest thrills of my life, but I am ready for a break. I know that sounds like the typical political answer, but it’s true. I am just finishing managing a federal department with more than 45,000 employees. The bottom line is that I’ve always been one of those people who bounced from the private sector to public service. I worked for Senator [Dianne] Feinstein earlier in my career, then started a public relations and marketing firm. I am now looking forward to taking some time off and then doing some business consulting. I am also going to continue to work on this labor of love: talking about “Hollywood’s Team,” a story about football, teammates, family, and a special place and time in history. Even though I live nearly 3,000 miles from LA, I bought Rams season tickets. I hope to go to more than the two games I made this year.

• The Hollywood's Team website - https://www.hollywoodsteam.com/about-me/

  Michael Downs is a former sportswriter whose books include The Greatest Show: Stories (LSU Press, 2012) and House of Good Hope: A Promise for a Broken City (University of Nebraska Press, 2007), which won the River Teeth Literary Nonfiction Prize. His recent writing has been published or is forthcoming in the The Georgia Review, Southern Review, River Teeth, and Sport Literate. Among his awards are fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Maryland State Arts Council, and the Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance. He lives in Baltimore, Maryland.

Downs, Michael: THE STRANGE AND TRUE TALE OF HORACE WELLS, SURGEON DENTIST

Kirkus Reviews. (Mar. 1, 2018):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Downs, Michael THE STRANGE AND TRUE TALE OF HORACE WELLS, SURGEON DENTIST Acre (Adult Fiction) $18.00 5, 9 ISBN: 978-1-946724-04-5
Downs' debut novel dramatizes the life of Horace Wells, a mid-19th-century Connecticut dentist on a quest to eliminate pain.
Wells and his wife, Elizabeth, attend a show where volunteers inhale nitrous oxide. He enjoys how the gas makes him feel and immediately recognizes its possible medical applications. When he and his colleagues use it during the removal of one of his own teeth, he's certain he has made a great discovery. After further experimentation on himself and volunteers, he asks William Morton, a Boston-based dentist and former business partner, to set up a demonstration at a prestigious hospital. But the gas doesn't seem to work when Wells pulls a medical student's tooth. He suspects Morton of sabotage and has a mental breakdown. Meanwhile, Elizabeth urges him to recover, focus on dentistry, and have another child with her. Wells, however, is determined to change history and has sworn not to risk impregnating her again, because she almost died during the birth of their son. It comes as a surprise, then, when he sleeps with a patient. Other painful and somewhat forced episodes follow, including a trip to sell a new invention during which he shoots his injured horse, stays in a commune, and attends an ether-inhaling party that ends with a boy being tortured to death. Upon returning home, he learns that Morton has popularized the use of gases as anesthesia. He tries to set the record straight, but his deteriorating mental health, brought upon by continuous recreational gas trips, stands firmly in his way.
Downs succeeds in crafting a fast-paced narrative full of humor, vivid description, and lively characters. A few too many tangents and point-of-view shifts make it a more arduous journey than it might have been.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Downs, Michael: THE STRANGE AND TRUE TALE OF HORACE WELLS, SURGEON DENTIST." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Mar. 2018. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A528959990/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=c61edb8d. Accessed 20 July 2018.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A528959990

House of Good Hope: A Promise for a Broken City

Publishers Weekly. 254.8 (Feb. 19, 2007): p160+.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2007 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
House of Good Hope: A Promise for a Broken City MICHAEL DOWNS. Univ. of Nebraska, $19.95 (320p) ISBN 978-0-8032-6012-2
Combining a reporter's eye for detail, the breathless narrative rush of an action movie and the generous heart of a hometown boy desperately trying to make sense of a place gone terribly wrong, Downs examines the social and economic disintegration of Hartford, Conn., in the 1990s through the coming-of-age of five African-American teenage boys. These young men--track stars, football players, scholars--try to make the right decisions while local and state politicians squabble over money, drug gangs roam the streets and the middle class--both white and black--flees to the suburbs. Harvey, Derrick, Eric, Hiram and Joshua make a pledge that no matter their future path, they will return to Hartford to rebuild their shattered city. The first half of the book flows with the power and grace of a finely tuned magazine article. Then Downs loses his focus and gets bogged down in a lengthy recounting of the boys' track coach's trial. The narrative shifts from the boys--now young men with growing families and burgeoning careers--to Downs's own struggle with his identity and the declining health of his grandfather. If the narrative splinters, perhaps it is an apt metaphor for the boys' pledge. Just one--Joshua--returned to Hartford. (Apr.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"House of Good Hope: A Promise for a Broken City." Publishers Weekly, 19 Feb. 2007, p. 160+. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A159789874/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=36f54e95. Accessed 20 July 2018.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A159789874

"Downs, Michael: THE STRANGE AND TRUE TALE OF HORACE WELLS, SURGEON DENTIST." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Mar. 2018. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A528959990/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=c61edb8d. Accessed 20 July 2018. "House of Good Hope: A Promise for a Broken City." Publishers Weekly, 19 Feb. 2007, p. 160+. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A159789874/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=36f54e95. Accessed 20 July 2018.

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