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	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Marie Arendt
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Memoirs

SEEKING SHELTER

Jeff Hobbs

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

In the tradition of Evicted and Invisible Child, a "moving, real-life saga" (The New Yorker) that follows a single mother of six in Los Angeles courageously struggling to keep her family together and her children in school amid the devastating housing crisisfrom the bestselling author of The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace.

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 waitressyet remains unable to afford legitimate housing or qualify for government aid. All the while, she delivers her children to school every day and strives to provide them with loving memories and college aspirations. Eventually Evelyn encounters Wendi, a recently trained social worker who, decades earlier, survived her own relationship trauma 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 "remarkably vivid and.deeply empathetic" (Los Angeles Times) exploration of homelessness, poverty, and education in Americaa must-read 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.

Jeff Hobbs is the New York Times bestselling author of The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace, which won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, was a finalist for the Pen/Faulkner Award in Biography, was a finalist for the Carnegie Medal in nonfiction, and was made into the 2024 film Rob Peace. He is also the author of Show Them You're Good and Children of the State. He lives in Los Angeles with his family.

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Book Published 2025-02-04 by Scribner

Comments

[A] moving, real-life saga . . . the narrative unfolds with gripping immediacy. . . . Though Evelyn is undeniably a victim of corrupt systems, she possesses a resilience that makes her story nothing short of heroic.

This book is a remarkable and urgent call for empathy in an increasingly divided and unjust country. With deep reporting and novelistic writing, Jeff Hobbs made me both understand and feel America's homelessness crisis like never before. I'll be thinking about Evelyn and Orlando for a very long time.

Seeking Shelter is remarkably vivid and detailed, as well as deeply empathetic. . . . [Hobbs] doesn't just recount events; he confidently probes his characters' psyches, parsing their motivations and emotions. . . . Hobbs' great gift lies in immersing readers in his narrative, keeping us rooting for his subjects despite their missteps.

Hobbs' gripping and deeply empathetic narrative nonfiction, Seeking Shelter, follows Evelyn and [her six] children as they sink into homelessnessoften sleeping packed into their aging SUVand then gradually resurface. . . . Evelyn's story explores those issues in intimate and unflinching detail.

A gut-wrenching page turner that will keep you on the edge of your seat, praying for the survival of a singular familyand the millions of Americans like them. In Seeking Shelter, Jeff Hobbs exposes the scourge of homelessness that's tearing apart working families. This book is a new classic that's perfect for fans of Random Family.

A mom struggles to keep a roof over her family's head in this poignant saga. . . . It's an eye-opening look at how the housing crisis extends far beyond what's visible on the streets.

This modern-day horror story is a heartbreaking account of an unhoused family attempting to navigate American municipal, employment, and education systems. . . . [A] compelling read with richly drawn characters . . . this is both an indictment of overwhelmed social services and a quietly optimistic celebration of resilience.

Hobbs respectfully illustrates the desperation of America's housing crisis through the lens of one woman trying to do her best for her family.

An account of homelessness and precarity as seen through the eyes of a woman and her family. . . . [A] work of advocacy journalism that points to the endless obstacles attendant in helping those in need.