FAR FROM HOME: Life and Loss in...

FAR FROM HOME: Life and Loss in Two American Towns by Ron Powers (Anchor: $12; 317 pp.). This brooding study of exurban America focuses on two towns, one battling poverty, the other an influx of wealth. With its unenviable history of racial violence and a crumbling financial base, Cairo, Ill., “seemed to have sunk down into the silt below its foundations.” The citizens of Kent found the pleasant ambiance of rural Connecticut threatened by an influx of yuppies seeking weekend homes. Powers contrasts the efforts of an eccentric reformer to remake the corrupt good ol’ boy politics of Cairo with the genteel struggles in Kent, where lawyers fought the preservation-vs.-development wars behind closed doors. Although often incisive, Powers’ account rambles a bit and seems inconclusive, because the recession effectively ended both conflicts prematurely.