Books in Brief: Safe Places

Safe Places, by David and Holly Franke (Arlington House, 932 pp., $13.95). A problem with scientific inquiry is that the act of studying a phenomenon often affects its behavior. The problem with a book like this is that, if successful in showing refugees from the turmoil of big cities where to go, the safe places may no longer be free from the very problems one sought to escape in the first place. Most people moving to a great, new place, though, want to lock the gate behind them and work to keep the best of what they have found. Exhaustive and amazingly accurate in its descriptions of the several towns I am familiar with, its greatest value will lie in providing the incipient refugee with a logical set of parameters to apply when choosing a new place to settle. I wish that all the photographs had been Franke originals instead of mostly old chamber of commerce handouts. Fortunately, the authors came no closer than fifty miles to my haven. Even so, on the evening of this writing, I met a couple unhappy with life in Connecticut’s safe place. David and Holly, did you save a secret few for your close friends?