Maddy is 20, living on the streets of San Francisco, when she witnesses a murder. This shakes her world, especially when the victim’s family tracks her down and tries to help her.

I don’t know if I’ve ever read a book so focused on the lives of homeless youths in America. This topic was especially heartbreaking to read about during the current pandemic, which has forced more people out onto the streets. We are meant to see Maddy and her friends through a sympathetic lens, empathizing with the struggles they face every day. It was this focus that led to this book winning the PEN/Bellwether prize for Socially Engaged fiction.

Unfortunately, this book fell short for me. I never felt like I understood the characters’ motivations and most of them just bothered me (especially Ash, he’s the worst). The plot jumps all over the place, and was hard to follow. I think there’s a lot of good here, especially the overall message. The book is short, and I think a longer version of Maddy’s story would actually have helped flesh out the plot.

However, I think this is certainly an important subject that I’m glad to see being addressed in a novel.
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At the Edge of the Haight is a fascinating book. It's very different from what I usually read, but I really enjoyed it.

What I loved the most in the book was the writing. Katherine Seligman uniquely brings to life the characters and tells the story in a concise yet descriptive way. There is nothing extra in the writing, nothing non-essential to the text. At the same time, the story itself is not difficult to understand, and the book pulls you through.

I was never bored reading this book, and it always kept my full attention. The book is about 20 year old Maddy, who is homeless and living in San Fransisco. One day, she comes across a boy who has been murdered and is there for the last moments of his life. Throughout the book, we get to know her friends who she lives with, and she ends up getting to know and spending time with Dave and Marva, the parents of the boy who was killed.

Maddy was a really interesting protagonist, and her story was very well thought out and developed. I loved reading about her past, and how we learned bits and pieces of her backstory, little by little throughout the book.

I thought that the author did a wonderful job creating a cast of characters who were all unique, and giving them life. Ash, Fleet, Hope, and Maddy were a great bunch, and Dave and Marva were very interesting as well.

I did want to know more about Dave and Marva though. They seemed to me as the characters with the least amount of information, with the least amount of depth, especially Marva, who didn't play as big a role in the story.

I definitely think that reading the book gave me more insight into what it would be like to be homeless and the book really sheds light on the struggles of homeless people that aren't often thought about. Whenever you see someone on the streets, your first thought isn't of their family or friends, but this book really dug into different scenarios, and what might be happening.

I think that At the Edge of the Haight is a very important book, and one that I recommend reading if this seems like a book you could enjoy.

Overall, it's an interesting book, with incredible writing, great characters, and a compelling plot.

One of the many consequences of this pandemic is that is has brought to the forefront hidden problems like hunger and homelessness. People who were living on the edge found themselves for the first time visiting food pantries to feed their families, and turning to charitable agencies to help them pay rent.

Katherine Seligman's novel, At the Edge of the Haight, shines a light on the problem of homeless young people in San Francisco. As we meet Mad, she is chasing her dog Root who has run off into the underbrush of the park where she and her friends spend most of their day.

Root and Mad stumble upon a young man in the throes of death, and a man standing over him who threatens Mad. Mad runs, fearful for her life. Mad's father left her when she was just a child, and her mother suffered a psychotic break a few years later. She went to live with relatives in a foster care situation, and left as soon as she could.

She ran to San Francisco and found other young people like her- running away from bad situations at home, many who aged out the foster care system with no support or place to go. Mad and her friends sometimes spend the nights in shelter, where they have to be in by 8pm and out by 8am. She goes to the public library, or hangs out in the park during the day.

In addition to the everyday stresses of homelessness- where to get food and money, clean clothes, avoiding the police- Mad now has to avoid the man who killed the young man. The young man's father, Dave, comes around looking for answers to what happened to his son. Dave and his wife want to help Mad out, but they make Mad uncomfortable.

We learn so much about life on the streets in this powerful novel. The scene where Mad and her friend Ash get soaked waiting out a rainstorm in a doorway overnight rather than spend the night in a dangerous shelter is so vivid you can feel the shivering rain on your own skin as you read it.

There are people who are kind to these kids- a librarian who gives Mad paper, envelopes and stamps to write letters, store keepers who let them hang out, people who work in the shelters who try to help them get assistance. There are also people who are not kind, like the gang of thugs who regularly take Mad and her friends' food and money as a toll payment. The people (some with their young children) who want to take photos with the "hippies" made me cringe, as if these young people are tourist attractions.

One thing that caught my attention was something that Mad's mother said- "You can't judge people because you just never know why they do what they do." That line resonated for me.

At the Edge of the Haight won the 2019 Pen/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction, a prize initiated by author Barbara Kingsolver, one of my favorite authors. Good fiction makes people more empathetic, and At the Edge of the Haight made me look at homeless people in a more compassionate light. We can all use a little more compassion these days. I highly recommend At the Edge of the Haight, it's remarkable and enlightening.

It’s no wonder that this book won an award for Socially Engaged Fiction. The portrayal of Maddy’s life on the streets is both touching and matter-of-fact.

Maddy was a character who evoked some sympathy for her plight, but at the same time she made it clear that this was her choice and she was being as smart as possible about it. Minding her own business and taking care of her dog, Root, were her primary goals. She knew her closest friends on the street would help look out for her and Root, but she also knew they were free to leave whenever they chose.

As a YA book, this presented a great overview of life in this makeshift community. It did not glamorize these kids living on their own. Their circumstances all varied in regards to how they ended up on the streets. The father of the murdered boy tried to make assumptions about why kids lived on the streets, but each kid’s story was truly unique, and usually unknown to the other kids. The kids shared their time with each other, but not their history.

Overall, I’d give this book 3.5 out of 5 stars. It could really help a reader visualize a lifestyle probably different from their own. I’d recommend this book for readers who enjoy contemporary fiction and socially engaged stories.

his award-winning and timely novel follows Maddy, a young woman in San Francisco, who is homeless and (mostly) living in Golden Gate Park. Her day-to-day is anything but easy. It’s a stark reminder of how homelessness can be all consuming and hard to climb out of, even with the resources available. In just the short time period the story covers, Maddy’s life took a lot of turns and was pretty unpredictable, despite having a small group of friends who looked out for each other.
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I love that Katherine Seligman came at this through an experience of her own and went on to interview unsheltered people in the San Francisco area, where she has lived and worked as a journalist for years. It felt like it was coming from a place of authenticity. There is absolutely a need for stories and characters like these, painted vividly as the author did. While the plot moved a little slower than I would’ve liked, I was still invested and rooted for Maddy the entire way.

4.5 / 5

Maddy Donaldo and her dog, Root, live on the streets. San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park is the closest thing to a home she’s had in years and her friends Ash, Fleet, and Hope are the people she now calls family.

Since running away from a foster home, Maddy has learned to stay as lowkey as possible out on the streets. But when she and Root stumble across a dying homeless teen with the killer still hovering about, Maddy’s life gets very complicated.

First, the police come asking questions of Maddy. Then the dead boy’s parents seek Maddy out, believing she can help them understand their son because she was the last person to see him alive. They also want to help Maddy out of her situation - is it due to guilt or trying to replace their son - Maddy is not quite sure. And lastly, the killer is still out there trying to make sure Maddy doesn’t stick her nose where it doesn’t belong.

This book is an absolute gem. It is a social commentary on the homeless population, as much as it is a suspense novel. I love that it is not overtly political. Seligman puts a human face to homelessness and lets her words speak for themselves as we walk alongside Maddy and her friends trying to survive on the streets. We get an eye-opening look at the life of these young people and what led them to this point in their lives. While Maddy embodies courage and independence, we feel that deep need for connection and belonging as well.

Thank you to @algonquinbooks @kr.seligman and @netgalley for an invitation to this tour and a #gifted copy.

This book is available on January 19, 2021.

A story that depicts homelessness, it was too easy for those who are not in the same situation to judge these people’s choices and decisions, but this book was perfect for showing people the life of the homeless and the many challenges and conditions they have to face everyday to survive. Some aren’t good, but not everything is terrible. Maddie is very relatable, especially for young people who struggle to find their place in this world. She wanted family, security, stability, and everything else people wanted to have. Her life is hard as it is already, and then she stumbles on a murder scene that forces her to work with people outside her comfort zone to ensure she will be safe. This book offers so much, even if it is a slow burn. The author gave us likable and significant characters, a realistic plot, and one hell of an emotional ride. The story is very inspiring, and I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to learn more about people that didn’t have the same comfortable life.

PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction so I was excited to read this YA novel which centers on Maddy Donaldo, who's 20 years old and homeless. She lives in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park where she's created a makeshift family and fallen into an unconventional but comforting routine but when she witnesses the murder of another homeless teen, the life she's built for herself is turned upside down.

The author is a a journalist in San Francisco and clearly did her research on what life is like for kids on the street - their routines are shared in detail that can be both illuminating and heartbreaking - but I never found myself connecting to the characters. Ultimately, I think the issue for me was that Maddy is an emotionally closed-off narrator and that kept me at arm's length as a reader. When the parents of the murdered boy try to save Maddy from a similar fate, she's torn between staying lost on the streets or choosing to be "found" by his family but even that struggle felt very surface. I did find reading about the kids living in the Haight interesting and Seligman's writing is beautiful - I just wish the story had more emotional depth.

Thanks to NetGalley and Algonquin Books for an advanced copy to review.

Teenagers wanting to live freely, unfettered by jobs or responsibility, may not be what one necessarily thinks of when one hears the word “homeless” but these are the subjects at the heart of Katherine Seligman’s novel At the Edge of the Haight. Maddy Donaldo was a typical kid until her father left and then her mother suffered a mental breakdown, which landed Maddy in the foster care of distant cousins. Maddy’s life there was not normal and when, at 18, the state said she had to find a job, she went to San Francisco instead and lived the life of other homeless teens and young adults in Golden Gate Park.

After having lived this way for a while, Maddy has a routine, friends, and family consisting of her dog Root. One morning Root runs off through the bushes, leading Maddy to discover a murdered man and his killer just nearby. When the hollow-eyed killer tells Maddy he knows where to find her, Maddy believes this is true and subsequent days and weeks are spent looking over her shoulder.

Eventually the young man’s father, Dave, comes looking for answers and tries to understand why his son chose to live the life he did. It becomes apparent that there is no one reason and that maybe Dave’s son, Shane, was not who Dave thought he was.

At the Edge of the Haight was completely engrossing to me although I have to admit that I was never completely satisfied as to why someone as smart and capable as Maddy Donaldo would want to endure sleeping out in San Francisco’s damp chill or being at the mercy of the elements because for her it was a choice and not a matter of circumstances. However, as Seligman depicted their life, there was a sense of community. The ideal of finding kindred spirits whose experiences mirrored your own. It felt as if this was a rite of passage for this common spirit. These children who felt always misunderstood or unwanted in their home life.

The reader never gets to know Shane except for bits the killer says about him and memories that Dave and his wife, Marva provide. For all intents and purposes, Shane did not seem like Maddy or her friend Ash, but maybe he was hiding who he really was and felt misunderstood because of it. Despite Shane’s death being the mystery at the center of the novel and Maddy’s obsession, neither the reader nor Maddy reach a conclusion or an understanding. Everything is not black and white.

At the Edge of the Haight opened my eyes to the world and dangers of teenage homelessness. How these kids are both seen and invisible. And how vulnerable they truly are. A riveting and engrossing novel.

I received an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I loved this book! It was great to read about a place I had been, and it was new to read a story from the perspective of a homeless woman. eye opening

I always appreciate any book that can help me get out of my bubble. “At the Edge of the Haight” opened my eyes to a whole new group of people that I’ve never really dove into examining before. The story follows a young girl, Mady, who is living on the streets in San Francisco. She’s not despairing about being homeless or working to find a job or get into school. She’s just focusing on every day as it comes (heading to a shelter or panhandling when she needs to).

I know that homelessness is a hot button issue for a lot of people (especially since we have so many here in LA.) But I was really drawn into the circumstances of Mady’s life since she’s only focused on the here and now. It was an interesting point of view to have because it’s so different from how I think I would be in the same situation. It’s always a good thing to get to experience the world through someone else’s eyes.

The aspect that kept me from rating this book higher is that there wasn’t a lot of action or forward movement to the plot. In the beginning of the book, Mady stumbles on a dead young man in the park where she hangs out. I thought there would be a little bit more to this mystery (especially when the man’s parents come to find answers after his death), but there really wasn’t anything to make the book feel exciting, even with this subplot.
I also felt disappointed by the ending. It was sort of abrupt and didn’t let the reader discover what would happen to Mady going forward. We’re left not even sure if her life will change or if she’ll remain homeless and on the streets. It felt hard for me to connect with Mady because I couldn’t really understand her motivations or choices – I think this is why the ending felt even more frustrating. I didn’t know Mady well enough to imagine how her story would play out past the last page.

I think this novel raises some really interesting questions. How do we help people who don’t really want to be ‘saved’? I’m impressed that Katherine Seligman was able to tackle this topic, but I wish that I’d been able to connect more to the characters. I’ll be interested to see what subjects she tackles in the future, even if this one wasn’t a hit for me.

While I enjoyed this book about a 20-year-old homeless girl living in Golden Gate Park, I was left incomplete after reading it. Is it about a girl who witnessed a murder or about homelessness? Are all homeless people as intelligent and put together as Maddy and her friends? Even with the challenges of their childhood why is homelessness their choice? The father of the murdered boy does not seem realistic nor does the support he offers Maddy. The story is at its best when talking about how the homeless survive day to day. That being said, I think this book would inspire a lot of talk as a book club choice and would make an interesting introduction to a discussion with people who work with the homeless. Maybe I’d get some of my questions answered.

At the Edge of the Haight by Katherine Seligman takes a look at San Francisco’s homeless youth, following a fictional young woman in her early 20s navigating living in Golden Gate Park with her pup.

Seligman does an empathetic job of explaining and therefore humanizing to the reader how her main character became street homeless, as well as gives insight into the logic behind the mindset of someone who is hesitant to accept tangible help when it is offered, despite accepting the help seeming to be the obvious/smartest choice.

The book is YA and the writing style very much leans in this direction. Initially, I found it to be choppy and not my style and was irritated that such a promising topic (humanizing people experiencing homelessness) was not written as strongly as it could be, but then I realized that the purpose of the book is for a teenager to grasp this topic, not a 30 something year old social worker, and when I accepted that I saw the book exactly as what it is intended to be: an empathy building tool for young adults, which it accomplishes perfectly.

The thing I like most about this book is that it doesn't have a happy ending, it has a 'this is real life, and real life is hard' ending. I think it would have been better if some of the other characters were fleshed out a bit, but the main character was spot on.

My stepdaughter lived on Webster, between the Haight and Fillmore districts. It was a mistake for me to request this book. I can’t finish it - I apologize.

I went into this book thinking that it was going to be about Maddy trying to solve a murder, with lots of twists and near misses. Instead what I got was an intense reminder of how we, as a society, scorn and flat out push homeless people out of 'our' spaces. We act as though because of their circumstances they don't deserve access to the same rights, comforts and privileges that we do. It's sickening and disheartening and unfortunately all too realistic, I can see now why this book received an award for bringing awareness to social issues.

I would recommend this for anyone needing a reminder that you are lucky in more ways than you can sometimes remember while in the moment of whatever discomforts that you might be experiencing. I don't mean that you should read this if you want to feel superior or to pity someone who may be homeless. I want you to read this, actually read this as your eye-opener to a topic that isn't written about often in YA novels. Open your eyes to how severely underrepresented and overlooked the homeless are in real life and outside of it.

3.75⭐️

Thank you Algonquin Books for a free copy to review.

Maddy is a homeless young woman living in the San Francisco area when she stumbles across the body of a young man, and his murderer is nearby. She runs away and tries to kind her own business, but somehow she gets wrapped up in the homicide investigation and the young man’s parents find her and ask her to testify. All she wants to do is get back to being on her own with her dog and her small group of trusted friends.

I’ll be honest, this was a quieter book. Nothing much outside of the synopsis happens but I thoroughly enjoyed the slower pace and how the author really crafted the setting of this book. I’m not sure how accurate the homeless aspects in this book are to real life, but to an outsider it felt pretty believable. The writing drew me in from the first page and I devoured this book in one night.

My only drawback is I’m not entirely sure what the overall point of this book was, but sometimes a book exists to just tell a story and I think that’s what happened here.

If you like literary fiction, I definitely think this one is for you.

An interesting and well written YA book which pulls some punches about life on the street. Maddy, who aged out of the foster system two years ago, is living in Golden Gate Park. She's lucky to have some friends she trusts as well as Root, her dog. It's Root who pulls her into danger, though, when he finds Shane, who has been stabbed- and the villain is still there. Maddy flees but is eventually tracked down by the police and later approached by Shane's parents, who want to help her. Maddy, Ash, Fleet, and Hope have had people reach out to them before but they've not taken assistance. Now, though, Maddy needs to make some decisions. Maddy is the best formed of these characters but they all ring true. Thanks to the publisher for the ARC. It's sadly a realistic representation of what happens to some teens and their inability to pull out of this morass.

Thank you Algonquin Books for the advance copy.

This book won the Bellwether Prizec for Fiction, which promotes Books that discuss social issues. The main character is homeless and she lives in Golden Gate Park with her dog and some other homeless teens and young adults.

The writing is very good, and never makes you feel like you are being "taught" about homelessness. You get to know the main character, Maddy, and bits of her backstory come throughout the book.

The main takeaway I had while reading this was the sense of stress and anxiety I constantly had for the characters, and for the unpredictability of every moment of their lives. Every time Maddy left her dog outside a building where he wasn't allowed, I worried she'd lose him. Every time she got separated from the dog I worried they wouldn't find each other again. Another character had a little pet rat, whose life was somewhat precarious as well.

Do not go in thinking this to be a mystery, or you'll be disappointed. It's more of a slice of life story for Maddy at a turning point in her young adulthood, that is affected by the boy murdered in the park, and Maddy's part in the following investigation.

The murdered boy's parents become a big part of the story as well, as they try to understand why their son would leave and lead that life. They place a lot of hope and expectation on Maddy who struggles with how to deal with them.

When I finished the book I thought I wanted something more. But as I reflect further, I like the open ending that allows Maddy to do anything going forward.

"At the Edge of the Haight" follows Maddy Donaldo who chooses to live in a homeless community. She finds herself involved in a murder investigation by the family who lost their son. Maddy journeys to find answers, but she doesn't make it far.

This book serves as an enlightening tale of life as a homeless person. The readers follow homeless people who dropped out of college, or who succumbed to drugs and alcohol, or just following a band tour through the country. This book told a story of all of those lives that are often glanced over and forgotten. Learning more about the homeless community was my most significant takeaway from this book.

I didn't think the plot moved anywhere. We see Maddy get involved in Shane's case, but it falls flat, especially when Maddy did not divulge any of her discovered information. I can understand that the contemporary genre is fictionalizing real-life scenarios and that some plot turns could be unrealistic. I was overall hoping for more active moments throughout the book.

I can't tell if it's a young adult book, which is neither a good thing nor a bad thing, but perhaps I would be more forgiving of it if it were a young adult book. This book could serve as a cautionary tale of homelessness and possibly put into perspective the realities of what it means to live without a home. I also think Root makes it seem a bit more like a YA book, but again, it was a bit hard for me to decide.

Overall, I appreciated the light it shed on homelessness and the challenges they face daily. I would have loved to see Maddy grow more throughout the book instead of leaving it as an afterthought at the end of the book. I would recommend this book to those who enjoy reading and learning about different perspectives.

Thank you, NetGalley, Algonquin Books, and Katherine Seligman for the ARC. I will post my review on Goodreads and Amazon and you will find a spotlighted post on www.instagram.com/lyatslibrary on January 22.