In 2011, Laura Moulton founded Street Books, a mobile library serving people living outside in Portland, Oregon. That summer, Ben Hodgson became one of her most dedicated regulars, setting the still-unbroken single-season record for borrowing. Then Ben's routines changed, and he didn't cross paths again with Laura for almost two years. Loaners is the story they began to tell when they reconnected, offering a street-level perspective of a community whose stories are seldom told, alternating between their two unforgettable points of view in this addictively readable, occasionally sublime memoir.
Pulitzer-nominated writer Karen Russell has this to say about Loaners: "A wonderfully sui generis memoir, braiding together hilarious and devastating anecdotes from Ben's years living on the street in Old Town — 'the Baltic and Mediterranean' of Portland — and Laura's decade of building her first bike library, a 'beautiful, ungainly, rolling creation,' into a sprawling, city-wide network of street librarians and patrons. Like Street Books itself, Loaners is a powerful collaboration between neighbors, a wonderful, chimerical book held together by the glue of humor, hope and connection. The right book can change a person forever in a few hours time. Anyone looking for evidence to pair with this grand claim of mine should read Loaners immediately."
