Excellent ... As Kidder relays the stories of the women and men whom O’Connell and his colleagues serve, Rough Sleepers becomes a detailed portrait of the lives of homeless Americans. We hear about their backstories, their struggles, their hopes for the future. We come to understand their decisions to avoid shelters and the factors that conspire to deny them apartments of their own ... Kidder, to his credit, never gives short shrift to the larger context. He just asks us — correctly, I think — to consider that in a world of far too much cruelty, the compassionate person standing at the bottom of the cliff is part of the story too.
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