Praise

House of Good Hope belongs to the family of works that includes Buzz Bissinger's Friday Night Lights and Darcy Frey's Last Shot. Sports are less of a focal point for Downs, though... What makes this a good read is the author’Äôs connection to the events he describes. Downs is no anthropologist collecting data. We learn in the book that he was born in Hartford and, after being raised in Tucson, returned there in 1989 to take a job with the Hartford Courant. Downs writes with an abiding, sincere wish that things were different, and he's honest about the pain his decision to trade Hartford for Montana has caused him. Like those of the five boys who do not honor their pledge to the letter, Downs has to negotiate a truce with the place and the people he's left behind.

- Joe Campana, the Missoula Independent
Read the Missoula Independent review here.

Read the Missoula Independent here.

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Michael Downs has done a wonderful job of weaving in his personal life with a story of hopes and dreams-some realized and some not. At times, his prose is poetic. The story of the virtual collapse of huge chunks of Hartford is a story that has played out in major cities across America. This story, extremely well-documented and reported, is uniquely and poignantly told.

- Maurice Possley, Chicago Tribune Investigative Reporter
Read Possley's work here.

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Hartford's story is a gritty inner-city tale being repeated across the nation in other urban settings. Downs does a good job of presenting the complexity of the problems of reversing the downward trends for people, schools, business, and community in such poverty-ridden areas. He brings a personal side to the story by revealing his own conflict about whether or not to return to Hartford, where his boyhood memories are of a better time for the city, or move away leaving his aging grandparents behind. It's a cautionary tale.

- Rosemary Carstens, editor of the e-zine THE FEAST!
Read FEAST here.

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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.

- Publisher's Weekly

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At its heart, "House of Good Hope: A Promise for a Broken City" (just out from University of Nebraska Press) is a lavish love letter to Connecticut's capital city, written by a native who moved away.

- Susan Campbell, Columnist, Hartford Courant
Read Susan Campbell here.

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"House of Good Hope is just a beautiful book, filled with the poignant bittersweet of hope and loss. Michael Downs writes about friendship. He writes about the promises we try to keep. He writes about poverty and despair. The subjects are agonizing, but they shine with the poetic clarity of Downs's prose."

- Buzz Bissinger, Author of Friday Night Lights and A Prayer for the City
Read about Bissinger here.

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"A huge story hiding in plain sight, House of Good Hope recounts Hartford's losses with a clear-eyed intimacy. Through the lives of five inner-city kids striving to be responsible men, Michael Downs asks what allegiance America owes its failing cities and what we all, as individuals, owe the places we call home."

- Stewart O'Nan, author of Everyday People
Read about Stewart O'Nan here.

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"With poignant story-telling, descriptive prose, and compelling neighborhood characters, Michael Downs captures the heartbeat of Connecticut's multi-cultural and poverty-riddled capital city. Downs is obviously a guy who loves his hometown-warts and all-and is enamored of its past, its shortcomings, and its potential."

- Stan Simpson, columnist for the Hartford Courant and radio talk show host for WTIC NewsTalk
Read about Stan Simpson here.