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A True Story of Homelessness, Found Family, and Second Chances
by Kevin Fagan
In the tradition of Stephanie Land and Matthew Desmond, a powerful and deeply reported narrative of homelessness, despair, and hope.
Kevin Fagan's The Lost and the Found, set in San Francisco—one of the wealthiest cities in America—takes an empathic, character-driven approach to exploring the human side of what's behind the homelessness epidemic.
An award-winning journalist and Pulitzer Prize nominee who has covered homelessness for decades and spent extensive time on the streets for his reporting, Fagan experienced it himself as a young man and brings a deep understanding to the crisis. He introduces us to Rita and Tyson, telling the deeply moving story of two unhoused people rescued by their families with the help of Fagan's reporting, and their struggle to pull themselves out of homelessness and addiction, ending with both enormous tragedy and triumph.
But The Lost and the Found is not just a story of individuals experiencing homelessness, it is also a compelling look at the link between homelessness and addiction, and an incisive commentary on housing and equality. Fagan shines a sharp light on this national calamity, and in sharing Rita and Tyson's stories, The Lost and the Found has the potential to change the way we see and help the homeless.
"Fagan traces the uniquely American slippery slope that leads to homelessness. A haunting proposal that the homelessness crisis is caused above all by a startling lack of compassion in American society." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"With compassion, an eye for detail, and an instinct for the human stories behind the statistics, Fagan gives voice to the often-anonymous individuals propelled on downward spirals that take them from suburbia and middle-class comforts to mean streets rife with panhandling, AIDS, fentanyl, disease, and death. Powerful, offering a humanizing and hopeful portrait of an abiding problem. A rare look at citizens often denied their dignity." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"For those who seek to understand how anyone could end up this way, and who might want to help in some way, this book provides an often difficult—but necessary—experience." —Booklist
"Fagan is a reporting legend in San Francisco, and this book shows why. An astonishing feat of immersive journalism and empathy, The Lost and the Found traces how two people ended up living on the city streets, addicted to drugs, separated from their families — and how they ultimately fought to save themselves, with help from loved ones who never gave up searching. It will forever change the way readers think about homelessness." —Jason Fagone, author of the bestselling The Woman Who Smashed Codes
"The American epidemic of homelessness and addiction cannot be understood or solved without knowing the stories of the people living on our streets. Kevin Fagan's The Lost and the Found is an unflinching examination of a human catastrophe and a heart-felt portrait of people we can readily recognize as our brothers and sisters. Against all odds, they cling to hope. You can't help but root for them in this piercing, masterful study of how the crisis began and how, with political will and moral conviction, we can end the suffering." —Steve Lopez, bestselling author of The Soloist: A Lost Dream, An Unlikely Friendship, and the Redemptive Power of Music
This information about The Lost and the Found was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Kevin Fagan is a longtime, award-winning reporter at the San Francisco Chronicle. He has been nominated several times for the Pulitzer Prize, and won the James Aronson Award for Social Justice in Journalism and the John S. Knight Journalism Fellowship at Stanford University. During his career, he has covered homelessness, the 9/11 terror attacks, serial killers, California's wildfires, and much more.
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