Methland The Death And Life Of An American Small Town

For my project i chose the book Methland The Death And Life OF An American Small Town by Nick Reding. The book takes place in a small town in Iowa.  The name of this town is Oelwein, Iowa.  A town with only 6,159 people Oelwin Iowa is like thousands of other small towns across the country, has been left in the dust by the consolidation of the agricultural industry, a depressed local economy, and an out-migration of people. As if this weren't enough to deal with, an incredibly cheap, long lasting, and highly addictive drug has rolled into town.In the first part of the book we meet some characters one being Nathan Lein, the town prosecutor, whose caseload is filled almost exclusively with meth-related crime.  Most of the people in the city live in poverty due to the fact of very little jobs.  Many of the plants were closed down in the town causing people to turn to what some call the most dangerous drug in the world.  " Talk about a nightmare," said Nathan reflecting back. " We'd lost all the bases of civilized culture around here.  It was a third- world.  people began to referring to Olwein as Methlehem." Another Character we learn about is Larry Murphy who arguably has the tough fist job the mayor of the city.   Murphy is the one who hired Nathan to clean up the town. Its amazing to think how a town can go from a normal small town to a town were chaos is taking place.