In hopes of emulating his hero Thoreau's Walden , a young man documents his life as he sets out from the family home to become a writer. In the Italian North End of Boston, where family, religion and food are of equal importance, he gets an apartment and a job working in a small grocery store. Surrounded by the sights, smells and sounds of a busy city suburb, he writes sketches of local history and of the many characters who populate his new life. And he meets women – one of whom he can see a real future with. But does she feel the same?

Based in part on the author's own experiences, Tillie and the Tailor is, as Paul Theroux notes, 'a rare and wonderful account of a young man realizing his ambition to become a writer'.

Praise for Tillie and the Tailor

'Tillie and the Tailor is a rare and wonderful account of a young man realizing his ambition to become a writer – rare because it is a double portrait, of a man and of his city, which happens to be mine, too. This is the truest chronicle I know of the full-of-life North End of Boston, with its transplanted Italians, their passions and pleasures.' Paul Theroux