First Job: A Memoir of Growing Up at Work

From the author of the acclaimed coming-of-age story Flight of Passage comes a rollicking memoir of a special time of his-and everyone else's-life. Rinker Buck's First Job is an enchanting and engaging book that not only captures the experience of being a "22year-old with the maxed out brain," but also lyrically evokes a special time and place-the Berkshire mountains of western Massachusetts in the early 1970s. First Job is, on its most basic level, the story of Buck's years as a cub reporter at The Berkshire Eagle, a great country newspaper in its glory years, when it won a Pulitzer Prize and served as the launching pad for many journalists' careers. But on a deeper level, it is a story that serves as a paradigm for everyone's first job, replete with mentors who guided Buck through that raw and anxious time; lovers and friends who exposed him to new levels of intimacy, vulnerability, and self-awareness; and adventures that could only have happened to a young man who didn't know any better. Everyone had a first job, and with rare storytelling power and emotions laid bare, Buck brings back just how it felt.