Seeking Shelter: A Working Mother, Her Children, and a Story of Homelessness in America

📚 Why We Recommend It

Beneath Los Angeles’ glittering skyline, Evelyn is herding six children through the cracks of the city. In 2018, poverty and domestic violence shoved their family into homelessness—but she refuses to surrender to a broken aid system, knowing it might split her kids apart or cost them their spots in school.

For the next five years, Evelyn works full-time as a waitress, her wages stretching to feed them but never enough to rent a home or qualify for help. She rises before dawn to drop the kids at school, scrubs tables until closing, then tucks them in at night in temporary shelters, spinning tales of college and sketching dream houses on cardboard. Then she meets Wendi, a new social worker who survived her own housing crisis decades earlier—and their connection becomes a lifeline neither saw coming.

Jeff Hobbs weaves their stories with Evelyn’s teen son Orlando’s voice, crafting a narrative that’s equal parts heart-wrenching and hopeful. This isn’t a dry analysis of inequality; it’s a raw, human chronicle: the absurdity of working three jobs and still being priced out, the quiet heroism of a mother giving her last fry to her child, the flaws in a system that fails so many— and the stubborn, unshakable power of people lifting each other up. Dive in, and you’ll meet the faces behind the statistics: lives forged in struggle, bound by love, and defying the odds with every small, stubborn step forward.