ive young, African-American men promised their lives to their troubled city, Hartford, Connecticut. They make a pledge to return with college degrees and a willingness to live and work in their hometown. Michael Downs tell their stories–how they kept or broke their promise to Hartford–in his book House of Good Hope: A Promise for a Broken City. On March 8, 2007, editor Brianne Burrowes with University Relations at the University of Montana spoke with Michael Downs about House of Good Hope and the universality of sacrifice and leaving home in and outside of African-American communities.
BR: What was it that made you want to write about these boys? Was it an idea that you always had since you first met them when you heard them make this pact or did it come later on in your career?
MD: It came later on. What happened is that I left Hartford, which is detailed in the book. And leaving Hartford was more difficult for me than I thought, especially because I was leaving my grandparents there. And there were some relatives in the area, but shortly after I left they left too. And then my grandparents were all alone. I began to wonder if leaving had been the right decision even though it was good for me personally. I wondered how other people would make that decision and then how other people would live with themselves having made such a decision. And that reminded me of these five guys who had made this promise.
BR: Had you kept in touch them?
MD: No. But I knew that after college they’d be confronted with the reality of their promise. Their promise would focus the questions I was asking because they would, now having become educated, have to make an active decision to keep their promise and go back or recognize that though there was a degree of wisdom to their promise, there was also naïveté. Maybe they would decide to break the promise, but their stories, mixed as they might be, would allow me to explore the questions that were troubling me. I wasn’t looking for an answer. I was just looking to explore.
BR: Was it difficult for these boys to allow you to write this story about their lives? I mean, it’s very personal.
MD: You know when I contacted them all, when I told them all what I had planned and that it would be a long process, that I would call them at odd times and ask them questions that would surprise them, and I would come visit them and I would ask to spend a day or so with them at a time, and I would want to talk to friends of theirs and relatives and the whole thing — what most of them said was, this is an important story to tell. You know? It matters for Hartford. It matters for other cities that are like Hartford. It matters for other people who like us who were once kids in these places. And because it mattered, and because I was still interested, and perhaps because I had been interested when they were in high school, they seemed to decide that I was an okay person to tell the story.
BR: And that they could trust you.
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meant to write on something else this week. I have the book sitting out with a bookmark stuck into page 3 or something pathetic like that. Instead I got sidetracked by the delivery of my special edition of the 
