Visiting Tom: A Man, a Highway, and the Road to Roughneck Grace (P.S.)

What can we learn about life, love, and artillery from an eighty-two-year-old man whose favorite hobby is firing his homemade cannons? Visit by visit — often with his young daughters in tow — author Michael Perry is about to find out.

Toiling in a shop Perry describes as "an antique store stocked by Rube Goldberg, curated by Hunter Thompson, and rearranged by a small earthquake," Tom Hartwig makes gag shovel handles, parts for quarter-million-dollar farm equipment, and — now and then — batches of potentially "extralegal" explosives. As he approaches his sixtieth wedding anniversary with his wife, Arlene, Tom, famous for driving a team of oxen in local parades, has an endless reservoir of stories dating back to days of his prize Model A, and an anti-authoritarian streak refreshed daily by the four-lane interstate that was shoved through his front yard in 1965 and now dumps over 8 million vehicles past his kitchen window every year. And yet Visiting Tom is dominated by the elderly man's equanimity and ultimately — when he and Perry converse over the kitchen table as husbands and as the fathers of daughters — unvarnished tenderness.

“Warmhearted…engaging…down-to-earth and genuine.” Kirkus Reviews

“Visiting Tom is more than just a whimsical portrait of a unique character. Its a meditation on modernity and self-reliance that sneaks up on you with its unexpected depth.” apital Times

“Michael Perry writes the words that create the memoirs that make so many of us want to raise chickens and pigs, plant a few rows of corn or otherwise just make hay. Mostly, though, he makes us want to get to know our neighbors better — no matter where we live.” Experience Wisconsin Magazine

“The portrait Mr. Perry paints...is of a place and a life that is worth noting….His writing is beautiful and immediate and elegant.” Wall Street Journal

“[Perry] is a sharp and empathetic observer.” Journal Sentinel

“In Visiting Tom, a story that melds Perrys unique humor with notes of Garrison Keillor and Billy Bryson, the elderly man's tenderness and character jump off the page as he shares his thoughts on life and love.” Express Milwaukee

“Drop whatever you are doing and sit down to read Michael Perry's Visiting Tom….Perry is a craftsman of the highest order….When you go back to doing what you were doing when you picked up this book, you might just see your world with a broader, more humane perspective.” New York Journal of Books

"Charming and humorous." Booklist

“Somewhere between Garrison Keillor's idyllic-sweet Lake Wobegon and the narrow-mindedness of Sinclair Lewis's Main Street lies the reality of small-town life. This is where Michael Perry lives.”
— St. Paul Pioneer Press

“Perry can take comfort in the power of his writing, his ability to pull readers from all corners onto his Wisconsin spread, and make them feel right at home.”
— Seattle Times

Tuesdays with Morrie meets Bill Bryson in Visiting Tom, another witty, poignant, and stylish paean to living in New Auburn, Wisconsin, from Michael Perry. The author of Population: 485, Coop, and Truck: A Love Story, Perry takes us along on his uplifting visits with his octogenarian neighbor one valley over — and celebrates the wisdom, heart, and sass of a vanishing generation that embodies the indomitable spirit of small-town America.

Michael Perry is an amateur pig farmer, an active member of the local rescue service, and a contributing editor to Men's Health