NONFICTION - Feb. 6, 1994

A CITY YEAR by Suzanne Goldsmith (The New Press: $22.95; 304 pp.) In 1990-1991, Suzanne Goldsmith, a young Harvard-educated reporter, spent nine months with a Boston-based community service program called City Year. She followed a diverse team of young people, many of them high school dropouts, as they reclaimed a community garden from drug dealers, tutored urban-area school children and renovated buildings for the homeless. The team members, an Asian immigrant, a white prep-school graduate, an ex-con, a black middle-class college student, a foster child and a grab bag of other racial and socioeconomic types, received $100 a week and either $2,500 in cash on completion of the program, or a $5,000 college scholarship.

It’s not surprising that the group soon runs into trouble with many team members either dropping out or getting fired. However, people who aren’t sure if national service is a good idea may be converts by the end of this book. As Tony, the team supervisor says, “Youth service is not the solution. What it does is help us do the work that allows us to find the solution. The work of diversity, the work of growing up, the work of taking personal responsibility . . . the work of building community.”

The only problem with “A City Year” is Goldsmith doesn’t always seem to remember that we never met these kids. Many readers will find it difficult matching names and personalities and there are quite a few team members who never become fully realized on the page. Yet the writing is so passionate, the ideals so generous, that it’s easy to forgive a few overly minimalist descriptions.