New Releases by Jeff Hobbs

From the bestselling author of The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace, a powerful portrayal of American homelessness that follows a single mother of six in Los Angeles courageously struggling to keep her family together and her children in school amidst the devastating housing crisis. In the tradition of Evicted and Invisible Child, Jeff Hobbs masterfully explores America’s housing crisis through the real-life story of Evelyn. This is Hobbs’s first book since The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace that focuses on a single character and her extraordinarily illuminating journey. In 2018, poverty and domestic violence cast Evelyn and her children into the urban wilderness of Los Angeles, where she avoids the family crisis network that offers no clear pathway for her children to remain together and in a decent school. For the next five years, Evelyn works full time as a waitress yet remains unable to afford legitimate housing or qualify for government aid. All the while she strives to provide stability, education, loving memories, and college aspirations for her children even as they sleep in motels and in her car, living in fear of both her ex and the nation’s largest child welfare agency. Eventually Evelyn encounters Wendi Gaines, a recently trained social worker who decades earlier survived her own abusive marriage and housing crisis. Evelyn becomes one of Wendi’s first clients, and the relationship transforms them both. Told from the perspectives of Evelyn, Wendi, and Evelyn’s teenaged son, Orlando, Seeking Shelter is a powerful and urgent exploration of the issues of homelessness, poverty, and education in America—a must-read for anyone interested in understanding not just social inequality and economic disparity in our society but also the power of a mother’s love and vision for her kids.

From the bestselling and critically acclaimed author of The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace comes “an eye-opening, fully humanizing, deeply affecting look at the often-misunderstood juvenile justice system and its inhabitants—young people of earnestness, disappointment, hope, and resilience” (Booklist, starred review). For many kids, a mistake made at age thirteen or fourteen—often resulting from external factors coupled with a biologically immature brain—can resonate through the rest of their lives, making high school difficult, college nearly impossible, and a middle-class life a mere fantasy. In Children of the State, Jeff Hobbs challenges any preconceived perceptions about how the juvenile justice system works—and demonstrates in brilliant, piercing prose: No one so young should ever be considered irredeemable. Writing with great heart and sensitivity, Hobbs “offers finely wrought portraits of the teenagers in juvenile hall, as well as the educators and counselors trying to help them find safe passage back to—and through—the real world” (Los Angeles Times). While serving a year-long detention in Wilmington, Delaware, a bright young man considers both the benefits and the immense costs of striving for college acceptance while imprisoned. A career juvenile hall English Language Arts teacher struggles to align the small moments of wonder in her work alongside its statistical futility. A territorial fistfight in Paterson, New Jersey, is called a hate crime by the media and the boy held accountable seeks redemption and friendship in a demanding Life & Professional Skills class in lower Manhattan. Through these stories, Hobbs creates intimate portraits of these individuals as they struggle to make good decisions amidst the challenges of overcoming their pasts, and also asks: What should society do with young people who have made terrible mistakes? “At turns touching and intimate, enraging and honest” (Matthew Desmond), Children of the State masterfully blends personal stories with larger questions about race, class, prison reform, justice, and even about the concept of “fate.”

The bestselling, critically acclaimed, award-winning author of The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace presents a brilliant and transcendent work that closely follows four Los Angeles high school boys as they apply to college. Four teenage boys are high school seniors at two very different schools within the city of Los Angeles, the second largest school district in the nation with nearly 700,000 students. Author Jeff Hobbs, writing with heart, sensitivity, and insight, stunningly captures the challenges and triumphs of being a young person confronting the future—both their own and the cultures in which they live—in contemporary America. Combining complex social issues with the compelling experience of the individual, Hobbs takes us deep inside these boys’ worlds. The foursome includes Carlos, the younger son of undocumented delivery workers, who aims to follow in his older brother’s footsteps and attend an Ivy League college; Tio harbors serious ambitions to become an engineer despite a father who doesn’t believe in him; Jon, devoted member of the academic decathalon team, struggles to put distance between himself and his mother, who is suffocating him with her own expectations; and Owen, raised in a wealthy family, can’t get serious about academics but knows he must. Filled with portraits of secondary characters including friends, peers, parents, teachers, and girlfriends, this masterwork of immersive journalism is both intimate and profound and destined to ignite conversations about class, race, expectations, cultural divides, and even the concept of fate. Hobbs’s portrayal of these young men is not only revelatory and relevant, but also moving, eloquent, and indelibly powerful.

Il protagonista del racconto è Robert, uno dei tanti afroamericani che abitano i poveri sobborghi di Newark, un''infanzia difficilissima, e un''adolescenza cupa e brutale. Ma Robert Peace non è uno come gli altri, Robert è migliore e grazie alla sua eccezionale intelligenza riesce a superare le selezioni ed entrare nella prestigiosa università di Yale. E a Yale diventa un genio della biochimica. Ma il ghetto chiama, il ghetto ha sempre richiamato Robert a sé, e forse è per amore dei suoi simili che decide di tornare a insegnare nella stessa difficile scuola superiore in cui ha trascorso la sua triste adolescenza. Il destino però è beffardo e i problemi economici fanno ripiombare Robert nell''inferno che pareva ormai soltanto un ricordo. La vità è dura e Robert comincia a spacciare, e poco dopo, viene brutalmente assassinato ad appena 30 anni. Cosa rende la storia di Peace degna di essere letta? La domanda ha una risposta semplice: Jeff Hobbs, autore tra i più talentuosi della sua generazione e, caso incredibile, compagno di stanza di Peace durante gli anni di Yale. Venuto a conoscenza della morte dell''ex compagno, Hobbs intraprende un vero tour de force per incontrare e parlare con tutti quelli che hanno conosciuto Robert e che ne sono rimasti affascinati. Il risultato è un toccante e profondo racconto, la storia di una breve e tragica vita spezzata. Lo stile di Hobbs è secco, asciutto, senza fronzoli. E la storia di Peace, come accade per i Clutter di Capote, è la storia di molti, è la storia di un destino crudele, che può essere dalla nostra parte, almeno per un po'', e poi riprendersi in un attimo tutto ciò che ci ha donato. Jeff Hobbs, è uno scrittore americano, vive a Los Angeles, questo è il suo secondo libro

A biography of a young African-American man who escaped the slums of Newark for Yale University only to succumb to the dangers of the streets when he returned home.

Meet the tourists, former classmates at Yale who, seven years later, must confront the people they''ve become while forging lives in Manhattan. David, a hedge fund wunderkind who forfeited idealism for wealth, hopes that a more fulfilling life lies ahead in the suburbs. His wife, the beautiful Samona, to whom David returns home nightly with nothing left for her, wonders whether her marriage is stripping away her best years. Ethan, a successful furniture designer with a magnetic sexuality, seeks something darker and more uncertain than the power lunches, needy family, and unsatisfying relationships that comprise his life. Rounding out the group is the story''s unnamed narrator, a freelance reporter struggling to stay afloat -- financially, professionally, and emotionally -- who shares complicated histories with each of them. When Ethan and Samona have a chance encounter at a gallery opening, they meet each other''s needs. As our narrator traverses the city and gradually reconstructs the events that underlie the present circumstances, his own mysterious role comes into ever sharper focus. Only later, after David commissions Ethan to design some conference rooms at his firm and a secret triangle is formed, does our narrator begin to tie all the pieces together. With The Tourists, Jeff Hobbs delivers a striking and stylish debut about the dark and sometimes destructive aspects of physical attraction and love, marital disillusionment, and the inevitable disappointments life can bring.