The Homeless Man's Journal
The Homeless Man's Journal

Author: Shayne Whitaker

Publisher:

Published: 2019-02-23

Total Pages: 362

ISBN-13: 9781734602005

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Based on a true story. While waiting at his usual bus stop, Ben discovers a notebook that tells the life-changing story of a homeless man who once slept there. The Homeless Man's Journal chronicles the experiences of author Shayne Whitaker. Abandoned by his mother when he was only four years old, Shayne embarked on an odyssey full of hardship, poverty, and abuse that crisscrossed the country. The Homeless Man's Journal will stir your emotions and remind you that the power to persevere is within us all. After being placed in a foster home when he was four years old, Shayne was eventually reunited with his father. He spent the next decade moving from state to state and town to town, living in impoverished conditions in dilapidated houses, motels, trailer parks, and even a ghost town in rural Oregon. Matters were made worse as he endured physical and mental abuse. When he was still a young teenager, Shayne was sent to live at an orphanage in a small southern town. Despite it all, he graduated from high school, went to college, served in the Army National Guard, and survived homelessness. More importantly, he discovered the meaning of friendship and family. It's a story that will inspire you to never give up. Join the author on an amazing journey where he sees the worst in people but also discovers the innate goodness that exists in the world. Homeless when he began writing the book, Shayne found hope in the idea that success consists of getting up just one more time than you fall.

Breakfast at Sally's
Breakfast at Sally's

Author: Richard LeMieux

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2008-10-17

Total Pages: 484

ISBN-13: 1628732059

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One day, Richard LeMieux had a happy marriage, a palatial home, and took $40,000 Greek vacations. The next, he was living out of a van with only his dog, Willow, for company. This astonishingly frank memoir tells the story of one man's resilience in the face of economic disaster. Penniless, a failed suicide, estranged from his family, and living "the vehicular lifestyle" in Washington state, LeMieux chronicles his journey from the Salvation Army kitchens to his days with "C"—a philosopher in a homeless man's clothing—to his run-ins with Pastor Bob and other characters he meets on the streets. Along the way, he finds time to haunt public libraries and discover his desire to write. LeMieux's quiet determination and his almost pious willingness to live with his situation are only a part of this politically and socially charged memoir. The real story of an all-too-common American condition, this is a heartfelt and stirring read.

This Is All I Got
This Is All I Got

Author: Lauren Sandler

Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks

Published: 2021-05-25

Total Pages: 353

ISBN-13: 039958997X

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A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK • From an award-winning journalist, a poignant and gripping immersion in the life of a young, homeless single mother amid her quest to find stability and shelter in the richest city in America LONGLISTED FOR THE PEN/JEAN STEIN BOOK AWARD • “Riveting . . . a remarkable feat of reporting.”—The New York Times Camila is twenty-two years old and a new mother. She has no family to rely on, no partner, and no home. Despite her intelligence and determination, the odds are firmly stacked against her. In this extraordinary work of literary reportage, Lauren Sandler chronicles a year in Camila’s life—from the birth of her son to his first birthday—as she navigates the labyrinth of poverty and homelessness in New York City. In her attempts to secure a safe place to raise her son and find a measure of freedom in her life, Camila copes with dashed dreams, failed relationships, the desolation of abandonment, and miles of red tape with grit, humor, and uncanny resilience. Every day, more than forty-five million Americans attempt to survive below the poverty line. Every night, nearly sixty thousand people sleep in New York City-run shelters, 40 percent of them children. In This Is All I Got, Sandler brings this deeply personal issue to life, vividly depicting one woman's hope and despair and her steadfast determination to change her life despite the myriad setbacks she encounters. This Is All I Got is a rare feat of reporting and a dramatic story of survival. Sandler’s candid and revealing account also exposes the murky boundaries between a journalist and her subject when it becomes impossible to remain a dispassionate observer. She has written a powerful and unforgettable indictment of a system that is often indifferent to the needs of those it serves, and that sometimes seems designed to fail. Praise for This Is All I Got “A rich, sociologically valuable work that’s more gripping, and more devastating, than fiction.”—Booklist “Vivid, heartbreaking. . . . Readers will be moved by this harrowing and impassioned call for change.”—Publishers Weekly “A closely observed chronicle . . . Sandler displays her journalistic talent by unerringly presenting this dire situation. . . . An impressive blend of dispassionate reporting, pungent condemnation of public welfare, and gritty humanity.” —Kirkus Reviews

The Man in the Dog Park
The Man in the Dog Park

Author: Cathy A. Small

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2020-04-15

Total Pages: 184

ISBN-13: 1501748793

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The Man in the Dog Park offers the reader a rare window into homeless life. Spurred by a personal relationship with a homeless man who became her co-author, Cathy A. Small takes a compelling look at what it means and what it takes to be homeless. Interviews and encounters with dozens of homeless people lead us into a world that most have never seen. We travel as an intimate observer into the places that many homeless frequent, including a community shelter, a day labor agency, a panhandling corner, a pawn shop, and a HUD housing office. Through these personal stories, we witness the obstacles that homeless people face, and the ingenuity it takes to negotiate life without a home. The Man in the Dog Park points to the ways that our own cultural assumptions and blind spots are complicit in US homelessness and contribute to the degree of suffering that homeless people face. At the same time, Small, Kordosky and Moore show us how our own sense of connection and compassion can bring us into touch with the actions that will lessen homelessness and bring greater humanity to the experience of those who remain homeless. The raw emotion of The Man in the Dog Park will forever change your appreciation for, and understanding of, the homeless life so many deal with outside of the limelight of contemporary society.

Stone Cold
Stone Cold

Author: Robert Swindells

Publisher: Penguin UK

Published: 2005-01-27

Total Pages: 113

ISBN-13: 0141927585

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Stone Cold is a Carnegie Medal-winning thriller by Robert Swindells. It is one of The Originals from Penguin - iconic, outspoken, first. A tense thriller plot is combined with a perceptive and harrowing portrait of life on the streets as a serial killer preys on the young and vulnerable homeless. Link, aged 17, is distrustful of people until he pairs up with Deb, another homeless youngster. But what Deb doesn't tell him is that she's an ambitious young journalist on a self-imposed assignment to track down the killer and she's prepared to use herself as bait ... The Originals are the pioneers of fiction for young adults. From political awakening, war and unrequited love to addiction, teenage pregnancy and nuclear holocaust, The Originals confront big issues and articulate difficult truths. The collection includes: The Outsiders - S.E. Hinton, I Capture the Castle - Dodie Smith, Postcards from No Man's Land - Aidan Chambers, After the First Death - Robert Cormier, Dear Nobody - Berlie Doherty, The Endless Steppe - Esther Hautzig, Buddy - Nigel Hinton, Across the Barricades - Joan Lingard, The Twelfth Day of July - Joan Lingard, No Turning Back - Beverley Naidoo, Z for Zachariah - Richard C. O'Brien, The Wave - Morton Rhue, The Red Pony - John Steinbeck, The Pearl - John Steinbeck, Stone Cold - Robert Swindells.

The Fields of Bentonville
The Fields of Bentonville

Author: Shayne Whitaker

Publisher:

Published: 2021-11-09

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 9781734602012

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After being knocked unconscious during a violent robbery, a promising but troubled youth awakens to find himself in 1864 North Carolina, months before the Battle of Bentonville. Before tragedy and peer pressure drove him astray, Douglas Timmons was a bright student and adoring son. One morning he wakes to find himself transported to the Civil War South. Sold into slavery, Doug is subjected to the wrath of a cruel overseer. Doug exists in a world where malice reigns and mercy is but a dream. He witnesses families torn apart, slaves young and old beaten, and the dreadful cost of hatred. As he seeks to find his way home across a chasm of time, Doug learns the value of friendship, the miracle of hope, and the power of forgiveness. However, each passing day puts his survival in jeopardy. The Fields of Bentonville is a story that asks the reader to remember the tragedies of the past, acknowledge the progress of today, and imagine the possibilities of the future.

Strays
Strays

Author: Britt Collins

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2017-07-18

Total Pages: 229

ISBN-13: 1501122606

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For fans of A Street Cat Named Bob and Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World, “this lovely, luminous story will warm your heart and make you laugh and want to share your life with a rescue cat” (Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, author of The Nine Emotional Lives of Cats). Alcoholic and depressed, Michael King lives on the streets of Portland, Oregon, and sleeps in a UPS loading bay. One raining night, he stumbles upon a hurt, starving, scruffy cat cowering beneath a café table and takes her in. He names her Tabor, nurses her back to health, and she becomes something of a celebrity in Southeast Portland. When winter comes, they travel from Oregon to the beaches of California to the high plains of Montana, surviving blizzards, bears, angry steers, and rainstorms. Along the way, people are drawn to the spirited, beautiful cat and are moved to help Michael, who cuts a striking figure with Tabor riding high on his backpack or walking on a leash. Tabor comforts Michael when he’s down, giving him someone to love and care for, and inspiring him to get sober and to come to terms with his past family traumas and grief over the death of his life partner. As they make their way along the West Coast, the pair become inseparable, healing the scars of each other’s troubled pasts. When Michael takes Tabor to a veterinarian in Montana, he discovers that Tabor has an identification chip and an owner in Portland who has never given up hope of finding his beloved cat. Michael is faced with the difficult choice of keeping Tabor or returning her to her rightful owner—and, once again, facing the streets alone.

Driving in Cars with Homeless Men
Driving in Cars with Homeless Men

Author: Kate Wisel

Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press

Published: 2019-09-11

Total Pages: 196

ISBN-13: 0822986981

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A Library Journal Best Book of 2019 Driving in Cars with Homeless Men is a love letter to women moving through violence. These linked stories are set in the streets and the bars, the old homes, the tiny apartments, and the landscape of a working-class Boston. Serena, Frankie, Raffa, and Nat collide and break apart like pool balls to come back together in an imagined post-divorce future. Through the gritty, unraveling truths of their lives, they find themselves in the bed of an overdosed lover, through the panting tongue of a rescue dog who is equally as dislanguaged as his owner, in the studio apartment of a compulsive liar, sitting backward but going forward in the galley of an airplane, in relationships that are at once playgrounds and cages. Homeless Men is the collective story of women whose lives careen back into the past, to the places where pain lurks and haunts. With riotous energy and rage, they run towards the future in the hopes of untangling themselves from failure to succeed and fail again.

The Can Man
The Can Man

Author: Laura E. Williams

Publisher:

Published: 2017-08

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781620145777

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This title explores the topic of homelessness from a child's perspective, with additional lessons about unemployment, savings, and wants versus needs.

The Word On The Street
The Word On The Street

Author: Kurt Borchard

Publisher: University of Nevada Press

Published: 2005-03-01

Total Pages: 202

ISBN-13: 0874176379

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Just beyond Las Vegas’s neon and fantasy live thousands of homeless people, most of them men. To the millions of visitors who come to Las Vegas each year to enjoy its gambling and entertainment, the city’s homeless people are largely invisible, segregated from tourist areas because it’s “good business.” Now, through candid discussions with homeless men, analysis of news reports, and years of fieldwork, Kurt Borchard reveals the lives and desperation of men without shelter in Las Vegas. Borchard’s account offers a graphic, disturbing, and profoundly moving picture of life on Las Vegas’s streets, depicting the strategies that homeless men employ in order to survive, from the search for a safe place to sleep at night to the challenges of finding food, maintaining personal hygiene, and finding an acceptable place to rest during a long day on the street. That such misery and desperation exist in the midst of Las Vegas’s hedonistic tourist economy and booming urban development is a cruel irony, according to the author, and it threatens the city’s future as a prime tourist destination. The book will be of interest to social workers, sociologists, anthropologists, politicians, and all those concerned about changing the misery on the street.