Ron Cassie

If You Love Baltimore, It Will Love You Back

Ron Cassie

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.