Most Popular Books by Jeff Hobbs

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.

"Traces the academic pursuits of four Los Angeles high school boys with very different backgrounds and resources who navigate challenges in class, race, expectations, cultural divides and luck to attend college."--Publisher.

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.”

Wandering the streets of Manhattan while thinking about the lives of his three former Yale classmates, a disaffected professional considers how their respective quests for happiness have remained unfulfilled in spite of their financial successes. A first novel. Reprint. 20,000 first printing.