Population: 485 by Michael Perry

From the book jacket: “After a twelve-year absence, a real-life prodigal son returns to his hometown — New Auburn, Wisconsin, population: 485 — and joins the volunteer fire and rescue department.  In a place where men post claims of manhood on their truck bumpers, where the local vigilante is a farmer’s wife armed with a pistol and a Bible, and where the most senior firefighter is a cross-eyed butcher with one kidney and two ex-wives (both of whom work at the only gas station in town), writer Michael Perry sets out “to meet my neighbors at the invitation of the fire siren.”  The emergencies are real, the settings are surreal, and with each foray into the boondocks, we piece together the history of a people and a place.  By turns fiery and funny, violent and gentle, Population: 485 is the true account of a search for rootedness in a place from the past.”