If You Love Baltimore, It Will Love You Back

Book excerpt: Baltimore senior editor Ron Cassie has garnered national awards for his coverage of the death of Freddie Gray, sea-level rise on the Eastern Shore, and the opioid epidemic in Hagerstown. This collection of short stories, culled from a decade spent roaming around Charm City with a notebook in his back pocket, is different, however. They are of the kind of wide-ranging city writing and literary journalism that speaks directly to the fabric of a place. There are encounters with former Rep. Elijah Cummings, former Senator Barbara Mikulski, and Orioles Hall-of-Famer Jim Palmer. But more often, these stories revolve around people few Baltimoreans have heard of--a blind police detective, old Jewish boxers, a flower shop owner, the city native who created the statue of Billie Holiday in Upton. Each story makes the picture of Baltimore and its work-a-day inhabitants--gritty, resilient, quirky--clearer and more complex at the same time.