Sign-In
Cart
Homeless Come Home: An Advocate, the Riverbank, and Murder in Topeka, Kansas
Paperback
Biographies GeneralPoverty & Social WorkTrue Crime
Publisher Price: $29.00
ISBN13: 9780268029814
Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press
Published: Sep 15 2011
Pages: 198
Weight: 0.20
Height: 0.50 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Awards: IndieFab awards, Midwest Book Award (MIPA), Midwest Book Award (MIPA)
Benedict Giamo has published widely on the condition of historical and contemporary homelessness in America. In Homeless Come Home: An Advocate, the Riverbank, and Murder in Topeka, Kansas, Giamo offers a deeply sympathetic yet critical look at the life of homeless advocate David Owen, who was tortured and killed in 2006 by some of those he intended to help. Part chronicle, part social analysis, part investigative journalism, and part true-crime book, Homeless Come Home examines why and how David Owen contributed to his own gruesome death.
David Owen defined his single-minded mission of tough Christian love, which he called Homeless Come Home, in terms of his belief that all homeless persons could and should be reunited with their family. He demanded that the homeless reenter society via telephone cards, cell phones, and their families front doors. Owen, who himself was disabled and had a history of legal and mental problems, would not take no for an answer. Many with whom he came in contact--pastors, social workers, legislators, police--feared that his fanatical dedication and aggressive approach ultimately would be his downfall. After police discovered his corpse on the bank of the Kansas River, four homeless persons who had been living in a nearby tent camp were charged with his kidnapping and felony murder.
Giamo explores Owen's actions and motives, the homeless community in Topeka, the social services available to them, and the separate trials of the co-defendants charged in his death. In doing so, he conveys the contention between social order and disorder and raises broader concerns regarding inequality, advocacy, and justice. The story is both fascinating and cautionary, a modern tragedy in which no one person can be identified as its cause.
Also in
Biographies General
Bluesland: Portraits of Thirteen Major American Blues Masters
Toby Byron (ED.)
Pete Welding (ED.)
Hardcover
Karl Popper - The Formative Years, 1902 1945: Politics and Philosophy in Interwar Vienna
Hacohen, Malachi Haim
Hardcover
The Children of Athena: Greek Intellectuals in the Age of Rome: 150 Bc0-400 AD
Freeman, Charles
Hardcover
Make It a Double: From Wretched to Wondrous: Tales of One Woman's Lifelong Discovery of Whisky
Sackier, Shelley
Hardcover
The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race
Isaacson, Walter
Hardcover
An Enemy Such as This: Larry Casuse and the Fight for Native Liberation in One Family on Two Continents Over Three Centuries
Correia, David
Hardcover
Agents of Chaos: Thomas King Forçade, High Times, and the Paranoid End of the 1970s
Howe, Sean
Hardcover
Better Living Through Birding: Notes from a Black Man in the Natural World
Cooper, Christian
Hardcover
The Secret Life of the Savoy: Glamour and Intrigue at the World's Most Famous Hotel
Williams, Olivia
Paperback
The Badger: The Life of Bernard Hinault and the Legacy of French Cycling
Fotheringham, William
Paperback
Florence Kelley and the Nation's Work: The Rise of Womens Political Culture, 1830-1900
Sklar, Kathryn Kish
Paperback
The Devil's Diary: Alfred Rosenberg and the Stolen Secrets of the Third Reich
Kinney, David
Wittman, Robert K.
Paperback
A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II
Purnell, Sonia
Hardcover
Living with a Wild God: A Nonbeliever's Search for the Truth about Everything
Ehrenreich, Barbara
Paperback
Seafaring Women: Adventures of Pirate Queens, Female Stowaways, and Sailors' Wives
Cordingly, David
Paperback
The Butcher, the Embezzler, and the Fall Guy: A Family Memoir of Scandal and Greed in the Meat Industry
Cherington, Gretchen
Paperback
My Own Devices: True Stories from the Road on Music, Science, and Senseless Love
Dessa Wander
Hardcover
Nobody's Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice
Giuffre, Virginia Roberts
Hardcover
How to Be Okay When Nothing Is Okay: Tips and Tricks That Kept Me Alive, Happy, and Creative in Spite of Myself
Lawson, Jenny
Hardcover
Family of Spies: A World War II Story of Nazi Espionage, Betrayal, and the Secret History Behind Pearl Harbor
Kuehn, Christine
Hardcover
Dangerous, Dirty, Violent, and Young: A Fugitive Family in the Revolutionary Underground
Dohrn, Zayd Ayers
Hardcover
A Walk in the Park: The True Story of a Spectacular Misadventure in the Grand Canyon
Fedarko, Kevin
Paperback
Catch the Devil: A True Story of Murder, Deception, and Injustice on the Gulf Coast
Colloff, Pamela
Hardcover