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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Brianna Labuskes, author of The Boxcar Librarian

When Works Progress Administration editor Millie Lang finds herself on the wrong end of a potential political scandal, she’s shipped off to Montana to work on the state’s American Guide Series --- travel books intended to put the nation’s destitute writers to work. Millie arrives to an eclectic staff claiming their missed deadlines are due to sabotage, possibly from the state’s powerful Copper Kings, who don’t want their long and bloody history with union organizers aired for the rest of the country to read. More than a decade earlier, Alice Monroe created the Boxcar Library in order to deliver books to isolated mining towns. She thought she found the perfect librarian to staff the train car in Colette Durand. Now, no one in Missoula will tell Millie why both Alice and Colette went out on the inaugural journey of the Boxcar Library, but only Alice returned.

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Laila Lalami, author of The Dream Hotel

Sara has just landed at LAX when agents from the Risk Assessment Administration pull her aside and inform her that she will soon commit a crime. Using data from her dreams, the RAA’s algorithm has determined that she is at imminent risk of harming the person she loves most: her husband. For his safety, she must be kept under observation for 21 days. The agents transfer Sara to a retention center, where she is held with other dreamers, all of them women trying to prove their innocence from different crimes. With every deviation from the strict and ever-shifting rules of the facility, their stay is extended. Months pass, and Sara seems no closer to release. Then one day, a new resident arrives, disrupting the order of the facility and leading Sara on a collision course with the very companies that have deprived her of her freedom.

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Sandra Brown, author of Blood Moon

Recently divorced and slightly heavy-handed with his liquor, Detective John Bowie does all that he can to cope with the actions taken (or not taken) during the investigation of Crissy Mellin, a teenage girl who disappeared more than three years prior. But now, “Crisis Point,” a long-running true crime television series, is soon to air an episode documenting the unsolved case. Beth Collins, a senior producer on “Crisis Point,” is convinced that Crissy’s disappearance was not an isolated incident. A string of disappearances of teenage girls in nearby areas has only one thing in common: They took place on the night of a blood moon. In a last-ditch effort to find out the truth, Beth leaves New York City for Louisiana to enlist Detective Bowie in helping her figure out what happened to Crissy and find the true culprit before he acts on the next blood moon --- in four days’ time.

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