Fresh Jersey: Stories from an Altered State

For over a decade, ordinary people, doing ordinary things, have given Mike Kelly the opportunity to inform and entertain readers of the New Jersey-based newspaper The Record. To Kelly, the story is in the people--and in the lessons that their experiences can teach the rest of us about living, dying, laughing, and loving. In this collection of his columns, Kelly pays tribute to those people as he shares their story with a wider audience.

Kelly charts the rise and fall of local, state, and national politicians. He searches for Jimmy Hoffa's legendary burial place in Giants Stadium, and he recalls an afternoon spent with a three-year-old AIDS victim. All together, these individual stories of hope and sorrow, of hardship and happiness, transcend their local origins and tell a larger story of how Americans live and perceive themselves.