What can you learn from your neighbor? That’s the ultimate question Michael Perry sets out to answer in his soon-to-be-released book, Visiting Tom: A Man, A Highway, and the Road to Roughneck Grace. The book follows a year of neighborly visits wherein Perry seeks various tools, miscellany, and snippets of wisdom from Tom. Perry, a native of New Auburn who now lives in Fall Creek, designates Tom as a “roughneck polymath,” a man who has a library of knowledge on a world of different subjects, contrasting sharply with our current era of specialization. Tom is also known for firing homemade cannons and harboring a sizable arsenal of stories, which Perry fleshes out.  Perry is author of the bestselling memoirs Population 485: Meeting Your Neighbors One Siren at a Time, Truck: A Love Story and Coop: A Year of Poultry, Pigs and Parenting. If ordered from Amazon before Aug. 21, Visiting Tom will arrive signed. Aug. 21 is the official release date for the book and its Kindle version.