
Seeking Shelter
A Working Mother, Her Children, and a Story of Homelessness in America
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Narrated by:
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Janina Edwards
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Jeff Hobbs
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By:
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Jeff Hobbs
About this listen
From the bestselling author of The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace, a powerful portrayal of American homelessness that follows a single mother of six in Los Angeles courageously struggling to keep her family together and her children in school amidst the devastating housing crisis.
In the tradition of Evicted and Invisible Child, Jeff Hobbs masterfully explores America’s housing crisis through the real-life story of Evelyn. This is Hobbs’s first book since The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace that focuses on a single character and her extraordinarily illuminating journey.
In 2018, poverty and domestic violence cast Evelyn and her children into the urban wilderness of Los Angeles, where she avoids the family crisis network that offers no clear pathway for her children to remain together and in a decent school. For the next five years, Evelyn works full time as a waitress yet remains unable to afford legitimate housing or qualify for government aid. All the while she strives to provide stability, education, loving memories, and college aspirations for her children even as they sleep in motels and in her car, living in fear of both her ex and the nation’s largest child welfare agency. Eventually Evelyn encounters Wendi Gaines, a recently trained social worker who decades earlier survived her own abusive marriage and housing crisis. Evelyn becomes one of Wendi’s first clients, and the relationship transforms them both.
Told from the perspectives of Evelyn, Wendi, and Evelyn’s teenaged son, Orlando, Seeking Shelter is a powerful and urgent exploration of the issues of homelessness, poverty, and education in America—a must-hear for anyone interested in understanding not just social inequality and economic disparity in our society but also the power of a mother’s love and vision for her kids.
©2025 Jeff Hobbs (P)2025 Simon & Schuster AudioRelated to this topic
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- Narrated by: Rebecca Lowman
- Length: 11 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Birdie’s keeping it together; of course she is. So she’s a little hungover, sometimes, and she has to bring her daughter, Emaleen, to her job waiting tables at an Alaskan roadside lodge, but she’s getting by as a single mother in a tough town. Still, Birdie can remember happier times from her youth, when she was free in the wilds of nature. Arthur Neilsen, a soft-spoken and scarred recluse who appears in town only at the change of seasons, brings Emaleen back to safety when she gets lost in the woods. Most people avoid him, but to Birdie, he represents everything she’s ever longed for.
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Compelling story and characters
- By LoriB49 on 03-27-25
By: Eowyn Ivey
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Children of the State
- Stories of Survival and Hope in the Juvenile Justice System
- By: Jeff Hobbs
- Narrated by: George Newbern, Landon Woodson, Aven Shore, and others
- Length: 12 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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From the bestselling and critically acclaimed author of The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace comes “an eye-opening, fully humanizing, deeply affecting look at the often-misunderstood juvenile justice system and its inhabitants—young people of earnestness, disappointment, hope, and resilience” (Booklist, starred review).
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“Lost in the system”
- By S. Saunders on 08-31-24
By: Jeff Hobbs
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Everything Must Go
- The Stories We Tell About the End of the World
- By: Dorian Lynskey
- Narrated by: Dorian Lynskey
- Length: 14 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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As Dorian Lynskey writes, “People have been contemplating the end of the world for millennia.” In this immersive and compelling cultural history, Lynskey reveals how religious prophecies of the apocalypse were secularized in the early 19th century by Lord Byron and Mary Shelley in a time of dramatic social upheaval and temporary climate change, inciting a long tradition of visions of the end without gods.
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A book that I needed
- By TJ Schreiber on 02-19-25
By: Dorian Lynskey
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Calling In
- By: Loretta J. Ross
- Narrated by: Loretta J. Ross
- Length: 8 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1979, Loretta Ross was a single mother who’d had to drop out of Howard University. She was working at Washington, DC’s Rape Crisis Center when she got a letter from a man in prison saying he wanted to learn how to not be a rapist anymore. At first, she was furious. As a survivor of sexual violence, she wanted to write back pouring out her rage. But instead, she made a different choice, a choice to reject the response her trauma was pushing her towards, a choice that set her on the path towards developing a philosophy that would come to guide her whole career.
By: Loretta J. Ross
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The Mother Next Door
- Medicine, Deception, and Munchausen by Proxy
- By: Andrea Dunlop, Mike Weber
- Narrated by: Andrea Dunlop
- Length: 8 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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No bond is more sacred than the one between a mother and child. And no figure is more sympathetic than a mother whose child faces a life-threatening illness. But what if the mother is the reason for the illness? What if the sympathy is the point? With help from some of the top MBP experts in the world, Dunlop and Weber uncover the complex maze of psychological, systemic, and cultural issues that compound MBP and offer solutions for how we might find our way out.
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A fascinating and important book
- By Anonymous User on 03-29-25
By: Andrea Dunlop, and others
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When You're Ready
- A Love Story
- By: Kareem Rosser
- Narrated by: Kareem Rosser
- Length: 8 hrs
- Unabridged
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Kareem Rosser and Lee Lee Jones were young, beautiful, and deeply in love. Their love was a real-world romance that felt like a fairy tale: Kareem was raised in the Bottom—one of the most impoverished neighborhoods in Philadelphia—while Lee Lee was raised in the wealth of the Pennsylvania suburbs. They met and fell in love in the world of horses: Kareem, a nationally ranked polo player and Lee Lee, a legacy equestrian. The world was at their feet, a lifetime of joy and adventure ahead of them. But their love story is interrupted by a devastating accident.
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An honest and touching true story about love, tragedy, loss, healing and happiness.
- By Rwoody on 03-20-25
By: Kareem Rosser
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Ends of the Earth
- Journeys to the Polar Regions in Search of Life, the Cosmos, and Our Future
- By: Neil Shubin
- Narrated by: Fred Berman
- Length: 7 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Renowned scientist Neil Shubin has made extraordinary discoveries by leading scientific expeditions to the sweeping ice landscapes of the Arctic and Antarctic. He’s survived polar storms, traveled in temperatures that can freeze flesh in seconds, and worked hundreds of miles from the nearest humans, all to deepen our understanding of our world. Written with infectious enthusiasm and irresistible curiosity, Ends of the Earth blends travel writing, science, and history in a book brimming with surprising and wonderful discoveries.
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Excellent scientific view of the poles
- By Prosanta Chakrabarty on 02-27-25
By: Neil Shubin