No Handbook for the Homeless

A Novel

There is no Handbook for the Homeless. Nobody teaches seminars or gives guided tours that promise to give you the inside scoop on where to flop when you’re homeless. You have to figure it out as you go along. Few of us plan for it. Perhaps, in today’s cliché driven world, it means we planned to fail. But how much farther can you fall than sleeping in the cemetery, curled up on your son’s grave because it’s the only piece of real estate you own. At best, if you find yourself homeless, if you haven’t burned all your karma, you will find a spirit guide. More likely the guide will find you. In this first novel by Joyce Trainor, Aileen Roark’s middle class life is forever changed by a drunk driver. Overwhelmed by medical and legal debt, Aileen retreats to a tiny rundown apartment and tries desperately to rebuild her life with only her son’s enormous dog for companionship. But the downward spiral continues and Aileen stumbles into a world unknown to her, hidden from wealthy tourists and part time residents in Santa Fe and Albuquerque, New Mexico. It’s a place where a night on the street can mean a death sentence or a ‘Go Straight to Jail’ card and change everything you believe about the ragged people standing on the corner. Street dwelling Wizard, a relic of the communes that dotted New Mexico in the 1960s and 70s; Father Rico, elderly priest to an impoverished parish; ex-boxer Cesar Jesus Chavez, now night manager at a cheap motel; and the quirky Billy James Dean, Esquire, defender of the almost guilty, help Aileen survive.