Desjarlais shows us not anonymous faces of the homeless but real people. While it is estimated that 25 percent or more of America's homeless are mentally ill, their lives are largely unknown to us. What must life be like for those who, in addition to living on the street, hear voices, suffer paranoid delusions, or have trouble thinking clearly or talking to others. Shelter Blues is an innovative portrait of people residing in Boston's Station Street Shelter. It examines the everyday lives of more than 40 homeless men and women, both white and African-American, ranging in age from early 20s to mid-60s. Based on a sixteen-month study, it draws readers into the personal worlds of these individuals and, by addressing the intimacies of homelessness, illness, and abjection, picks up where most scholarship and journalism stops. Robert Desjarlais works against the grain of media representations of homelessness by showing us not anonymous stereotypes but individuals. He draws on conversations as well as observations, talking with and listening to shelter residents to understand how they relate to their environment, to one another, and to those entrusted with their care. His book considers their lives in terms of a complex range of forces and helps us comprehend the linkages between culture, illness, personhood, and political agency on the margins of contemporary American society. Shelter Blues is unlike anything else ever written about homelessness. It challenges social scientists and mental health professionals to rethink their approaches to human subjectivity and helps us all to better understand one of the most pressing problems of our time.

This hard-hitting story lights up the world of animal rescue with engaging characters and their pets, bringing hope out of personal tragedies. Danny Sandoval, a character from the author’s previous book, “Prairie Dog Blues,” joins up with his friends to take on Norma Jean Lawson and her Safe Sanctuary No-Kill Rescue Center in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Danny accuses Safe Sanctuary of negligent animal care, claiming they do more harm than good. Undaunted, Norma Jean puts up a fierce fight through her attorney, and sues Danny for libel and slander. Danny fights back, and both Danny and Norma Jean struggle with their own internal demons as they attempt to rescue dogs and cats, innocent creatures that sometimes bring a mysterious transforming power to broken lives. Their battle shows that bad motives often end in darkness, and that animals and a clean heart can reveal pathways to God’s healing. “Dog Shelter Blues” takes these beaten, everyday people on a breathtaking journey that ends with an astonishing triumph of good over evil. MARK CONKLING--teacher, homebuilder, realtor, finance manager, retired Methodist pastor--returns to writing with this second novel, the first being “Prairie Dog Blues,” also from Sunstone Press. Mark lives in Rio Rancho, New Mexico, works with his wife Patricia (Meadowlark Family Healthcare), walks his dog in the Bosque near the Rio Grande, frequents the recovery community (AA), writes fiction, and seeks daily peace of mind. His short fiction was published in the Minnetonka Review and Diverse Voices Quarterly. Years ago, as a university professor (PhD, philosophy and psychology), Mark published several academic articles in existential philosophy and psychology, including “Consciousness and the Unconscious in William James' “Principles of Psychology,” (Human Inquiries), “Sartre's Refutation of the Freudian Unconscious,” (Review of Existential Psychology and Psychiatry), and “Ryle's Mistake About Consciousness” (Philosophy Today).

Martha has lost her collar and ended up at the local animal shelter. When Martha is picked up, she feels sad for her new friends. Martha and her friends cook up a spectacular plan to find families for all of the pound pooches!

"How are notions of 'home' made and negotiated by ethnographers? And how does the researcher relate to forms of home encountered during fieldwork? Rather than searching for an abstract, philosophical understanding of home, this collection asks how home gains its meaning and significance through ongoing efforts to create, sustain or remake a sense of home. The volume explores how researchers and informants alike are always involved in the process of making and unmaking home, and challenges readers to reimagine ethnographic practice in terms of active, morally complex process of home-making. Contributions reach across the globe and across social contexts, and the book includes chapters on council housing and middle-class apartment buildings, homelessness and migration, problems with accessing the field as well as limiting it, physical as well as sentimental notions of home, and objects as well as inter-human social relations. Home draws attention to processes of sociality that normally remain analytically invisible, and contributes to a growing and rich field of study on the anthropology of home."--

Martha has lost her collar and ended up at the local animal shelter. It falls to her to organize a pound break for all her new doggy friends but she soon discovers freedom isn't much without a family. When Martha's owner finally comes to take her home, she realizes that she can't leave her shelter friends behind. Martha, Helen, and her friends cook up a spectacular plan--Wagstaff's first Top Dog Show--to find families for all of the pound pooches! The book will include a cast of characters introduction and two pages of word-fun activities.

How the US asylum process fails to protect against claims of gender-based violence Through eyewitness accounts of closed-court proceedings and powerful testimony from women who have sought asylum in the United States because of severe assaults and death threats by intimate partners and/or gang members, Private Violence examines how immigration laws and policies shape the lives of Latin American women who seek safety in the United States. Carol Cleaveland and Michele Waslin describe the women’s histories prior to crossing the border, and the legal strategies they use to convince Immigration Judges that rape and other forms of “private violence” should merit asylum – despite laws built on Cold War era assumptions that persecution occurs in the public sphere by state actors. Private Violence provides much-needed recommendations for incorporating a gender-based lens in the asylum process. The authors demonstrate how policy changes across Presidential administrations have made it difficult for survivors of “private violence” to qualify for asylum. Private Violence paints a damning portrait of America’s broken asylum system. This volume illustrates the difficulties experienced by Latin American women who rely on this broken system for protection in the United States. It also illuminates women’s resilience and the determination of immigration attorneys to reshape asylum law.