If it were not for the homeless character, doubt I could have finished reading "The Night of Many Endings," by Melissa Payne. Normally, I would share a lot of quotes from novels mentioning homeless people, but found the novel boring, so did not take time to record them.
The story is about, Nora, a librarian whose brother has been addicted to drugs and alcohol, in and out of homelessness. I could only relate to her feeling of worry that her brother would wind up dead in an alley from an overdose. That thought plagued me up until the time my brother died. He was never homeless; on & off heroin addition.
Due to an unexpected blizzard, a group of people got stranded in the library overnight. One of those was a homeless man, Lewis, who Nora saved from death due to drug overdoes using nasal spray. Lewis sunk into addiction due to guilt over shooting students at Kent State in 1970. I am guessing that is authors creation. Interesting food for thought about National Guards possible regent for killing student protestors?
Lewis experiences could be Any Homeless Person in the U.S. of A., such as feeling invisible. The novel had an ambiguous ending. Spoiler Alert: although Lewis became "clean and sober," the story did not mention getting a job, a home, earing enough money to buy a well tailored suit. Lewis said he was an instant criminal due to being homeless. Sad, but true.
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