Without a Net: Middle Class and Homeless (with Kids) in America: My Story [Hardcover]

Michelle Kennedy (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 17, 2005

At twenty-four, Michelle Kennedy was an ex-college student, an ex-U.S. Senate intern, an ex- wife, and an ex-member of the middle class. Faced with an untenable home situation, Michelle and her three small children retreated to the only refuge they had left—the backseat of a Subaru station wagon. Without a Net is one woman’s true story of scraping the bottom of the American Dream—sleeping in parking lots, showering at campgrounds, and cooking ramen noodles over a public grill for dinner, all while taking care of three kids and working a full-time job. With humor and honesty, Michelle Kennedy describes how a few bad choices can push even a smart, educated woman and loving mother below the poverty line. And how, using her wits, a little luck, and a lot of courage and determination, she survived disaster to create a new home for her family.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

You'd think it'd take a while to go from "given-every-opportunity, spoiled-in-every-way... middle-class housewife... to homeless single mother," but Kennedy did it in less than a year. Just some "bad judgment calls and wrong decisions," and a smart young former Senate page and promising college student found herself, at 25, living in a station wagon with her three young children, making pots of ramen noodles at campgrounds and showering at truck stops. Oddly enough, once readers learn the details, the story of Kennedy's downfall goes from being unlikely to horribly plausible. Her parents couldn't cover her tuition, but she couldn't get financial aid unless she was independent or married. So she married her boyfriend, got pregnant, dropped out and had two more children. Meanwhile, on a back-to-the-land kick, her husband moved the family to rural Maine. His neglect almost killed one child, so Kennedy left him and took the kids to a small coastal Maine town. Finding waitressing work was simple; finding affordable child care or an apartment that a landlord would rent to someone in her situation was impossible. So Kennedy improvised—lots. While the details are fascinating, they'd also be quite depressing if it weren't for the subplot of Kennedy falling in love with a co-worker. Indeed, her romance with this hunk absolutely hijacks the homelessness story—but readers will be too engrossed to care.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Kennedy recounts how she metamorphosed from a carefree college student into a homeless 24-year-old with three children by making some "bad judgment calls," the first of which was marrying her boyfriend to be eligible for financial aid. Three children come in unplanned succession, her back-to-nature husband moves the family to a rural cabin with no electricity, and his negligence nearly kills their daughter. These are the catalysts leading to Kennedy's double life: she looks normal enough at the pub where she waitresses, but she and her three children are sleeping in their Subaru, showering at a truck stop, and boiling Ramen noodles on a campground grill. Unwilling to confide her desperate situation to her parents, she finally saves enough for the first month's rent and security deposit on a small apartment, an impossible accomplishment for so many homeless people, as Kennedy elucidates in her compelling epilogue, which lays bare the economic causes of homelessness, and describes agencies to which she could have turned for help had she been less stubborn and better informed. Deborah Donovan
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Viking Adult (February 17, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0670033669
• ISBN-13: 978-0670033669
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (38 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #561,152 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I am the author of 14 books, nine of them about parenting issues, 2 memoirs and a novel. I am the unschooling mom of 7 kids, ages 2-19, and love to live, learn and work on our 40 acre homestead and sled dog kennel in Northern Wisconsin. Visit Mish online at http://www.mishahogan.com.

I love to travel and speak to different groups on how to live on less, unschool your kids, and deal with homelessness.

In my almost 40 years on Earth, I have been a waitress, bartender, nursing assistant, tour guide for Ben and Jerry's, restaurant owner, farmer, dog musher, bread-baker, and page in the U.S. Senate...a few other things too.

My publishing credits include: FamilyFun Magazine, Family Circle, Redbook, The New York Times, The Christian Science Monitor, Salon.com, Brain, Child Magazine, NPR, and many other publications.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Don't even think about it, June 8, 2005

By 

Valerie Shane - See all my reviews

This review is from: Without a Net: Middle Class and Homeless (with Kids) in America: My Story (Hardcover)

This book is just awful. I am quite sympathetic to the homeless problem and thought this book would provide me with a little more insight as to why people are homeless and how they deal with it. The truth is that this woman was not really in the kind of dire straights most homeless people are in. For one thing, her parents would have taken her in if they knew she was living in her car, regardless of their being disappointed in her. She should have been arrested for endangering her children's lives by leaving them in her car while she worked in a bar. She could have gone to a shelter or something but she didn't even try. She preferred instead to endanger her children's lives. The "happy" ending comes when she steals another woman's boyfriend who she meets at the bar. She made every stupid, selfish choice a woman in her position could have made, and we are to feel sorry for her? The only ones I feel sorry for are her children. It's unfortunate that this woman is set up to represent the homeless. If I thought all homeless people were like her I'd say, forget them all, they're idiots. I'm just glad that I borrowed this book instead of buying it...she doesn't deserve to make money from this phony-balony portrait of the homeless. In fact, she's doing them a diservice.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars It Can Happen to You, February 28, 2005

By 

Barbara M. "Barbara" (Boston) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Without a Net: Middle Class and Homeless (with Kids) in America: My Story (Hardcover)

I have just finished Michelle Kennedy's excellent memoir "Without a Net" and am planning on giving it to friends to read, especially the female ones. Bad decisions happen to everyone and Ms. Kennedy honestly writes about her bad decisions and how they led her and her 3 children to living out of their car. The United States, being a country that is wealthy, has just as many people who are hungry and "living without a net" and Ms. Kennedy writes a powerful story. For those of us with roofs over our heads and food on our tables, we should be extremely thankful.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Worth a read, March 15, 2007

By 

Barb Mechalke (in the lovely Finger Lakes Region of Upstate New York) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Without a Net: Middle Class and Homeless (with Kids) in America: My Story (Hardcover)

I was really curious about how this mother of three with a middle class up-bringing ended up homeless and living out of her car. But she pretty much spells it out for us...it's one bad decision after another and a TON of foolish pride.

While I'm pretty sure I couldn't have done what she did and have maintained my sanity I'm not so sure that what she did was what a good mother would do. I understand that she felt she had to but given that that was her thought process I think maybe there is something not quite right with her thought processing. I think she was really really lucky the way that things turned out for her in the end. And lucky for her that no one reported her to child protective services.

I didn't understand why she didn't go to her parents for help, she never gave any indication that they were anything but caring parents. I also thought it was surprising that she couldn't have found some resources to help her when she was homeless.

Bookwise...I thought it was a quick and easy read and if you want to know how she ended up living out of her car it's all in there.