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

March 2025

Jeff Hobbs has been on my radar since I first interviewed him 11 years ago about THE SHORT AND TRAGIC LIFE OF ROBERT PEACE, a book that I have thought about again and again. So when I saw SEEKING SHELTER, I knew I wanted to read it. For 2025, I have been looking for one book each month about a social issue to read and discuss.

With the way Jeff tells a story, I get invested in the characters and what happens in their lives. Homelessness in America, especially in large cities like Los Angeles, is a huge issue. Home instability abounds, and many live one paycheck away from losing their home. In SEEKING SHELTER, readers get to know Evelyn, a mother of five (soon to be six) who has moved to LA to chase a dream of a better education for her children. It’s 2018 when we meet her. Shortly afterwards, she leaves her abusive husband and is working full time as a waitress. But she still cannot afford housing of her own or navigate government assistance.

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Sophie Stava, author of Count My Lies

Sloane Caraway is a liar. Harmless lies, mostly, to make her self-proclaimed sad little life a bit more interesting. So when Sloane sees a young girl in tears at a park one afternoon, she can’t help herself. She tells the girl’s (very attractive) dad that she’s a nurse and helps him pull a bee stinger from the girl’s foot. With this lie, and chance encounter, Sloane becomes the nanny for the wealthy and privileged Jay and Violet Lockhart. They’re the perfect New York couple, with a brownstone, a daughter in private school, and summers on Block Island. But maybe Sloane isn’t the only one lying, and all that’s picture-perfect harbors a much more dangerous truth.

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Charlotte McConaghy, author of Wild Dark Shore

Dominic Salt and his three children are caretakers of Shearwater, a tiny island not far from Antarctica. Home to the world’s largest seed bank, Shearwater was once full of researchers, but with sea levels rising, the Salts are now its final inhabitants. Until, during the worst storm the island has ever seen, a woman mysteriously washes ashore. As they nurse Rowan back to strength, it begins to feel like she might be just what they need. Rowan starts imagining a future where she could belong to someone again. But she isn’t telling the whole truth about why she set out for Shearwater. And when she discovers sabotaged radios and a freshly dug grave, she realizes that Dominic is keeping his own secrets. As the storms on Shearwater gather force, they all must decide if they can trust each other enough to protect the precious seeds in their care before it’s too late.

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Elle Cosimano, author of Finlay Donovan Digs Her Own Grave

Finlay Donovan and her nanny/partner-in-crime, Vero, have not always gotten along with Finlay’s elderly neighbor, Mrs. Haggerty, the community busybody and president of the neighborhood watch. But when a dead body is discovered in her backyard, Mrs. Haggerty needs their help. At first a suspect, Mrs. Haggerty is cleared by the police, but her house remains an active crime scene. She has nowhere to go…except Finlay’s house, right across the street. Finlay and Vero have no interest in getting involved in another murder case --- or sacrificing either of their bedrooms. But when the focus of the investigation widens to include Finlay’s ex-husband, Steven, Finlay and Vero are left with little choice but to get closer to Mrs. Haggerty and uncover her secrets…before the police start digging up theirs. But who will solve the mystery first?

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Chris Bohjalian, author of The Jackal's Mistress

Virginia, 1864. Libby Steadman’s husband has been away for so long that she can barely conjure his voice in her dreams. While she longs for him in the night, fearing him dead in a Union prison camp, her days are spent running a gristmill with her teenage niece, a hired hand and his wife. It’s an uneasy life in the Shenandoah Valley, and Libby awakens every morning expecting to see her land a battlefield. And then she finds a gravely injured Union officer left for dead in a neighbor’s house. Captain Jonathan Weybridge of the Vermont Brigade is her enemy --- but he’s also a human being, and Libby must make a terrible decision: Does she leave him to die alone? Or does she risk treason and try to nurse him back to health? And if she succeeds, does she try to secretly bring him across Union lines, where she might negotiate a trade for news of her own husband?

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Amy Griffin, author of The Tell: A Memoir

For decades, Amy Griffin ran. Through the dirt roads of Amarillo, Texas, where she grew up; to the campus of the University of Virginia, as a student athlete; on the streets of New York, where she built her adult life; through marriage, motherhood and a thriving career. To outsiders, it all looked, in many ways, perfect. But Amy was running from something --- a secret she was keeping not only from her family and friends, but unconsciously from herself. “You’re here, but you’re not here,” her daughter said to her one night. “Where are you, Mom?” So began Amy’s quest to solve a mystery trapped in the deep recesses of her own memory --- a journey that would take her into the burgeoning field of psychedelic therapy, to the limits of the judicial system, and, ultimately, home to the Texas panhandle, where her story began.

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Clare Leslie Hall, author of Broken Country

Beth and her gentle, kind husband, Frank, are happily married, though their relationship relies on the past staying buried. But when Beth’s brother-in-law shoots a dog going after their sheep, Beth doesn’t realize that the gunshot will alter the course of their lives. For the dog belonged to none other than Gabriel Wolfe, the man Beth loved as a teenager --- the man who broke her heart years ago. Gabriel has returned to the village with his young son, Leo, a boy who reminds Beth very much of her own son, who died in a tragic accident. As Beth is pulled back into Gabriel’s life, tensions around the village rise and dangerous secrets and jealousies from the past resurface, this time with deadly consequences. Beth is forced to make a choice between the woman she once was and the woman she has become.

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