Michelle Kennedy had a typical middle class American childhood in Vermont. She attended college, interned in the U.S. Senate, married her high school sweetheart and settled in the suburbs of D.C. But the comfortable life she was building quickly fell apart. At age twenty-four Michelle was suddenly single, homeless, and living out of a car with her three small children. She waitressed night shifts while her kids slept out in the diner's parking lot. She saved her tips in the glove compartment, and set aside a few quarters every week for truck stop showers for her and the kids. With startling humor and honesty, Kennedy describes the frustration of never having enough money for a security deposit on an apartment—but having too much to qualify for public assistance. Without A Net is a story of hope. Michelle Kennedy survives on her wits, a little luck, and a lot of courage. And in the end, she triumphs. "Refreshingly candid... Without A Net shows how frighteningly easy it can be for an ordinary, non substance-abusing middle-class woman and devoted mother to find herself unable to afford a place to live." — Los Angeles Times Book Review  "[Kennedy’s] sense of humor, ingenuity, and refreshing refusal to blame others for her mistakes won me over, and I quickly found myself rooting for her to succeed." — Elle Magazine "A beautiful, heartfelt, and wonderful book." — Dorothy Allison , author of Bastard Out of Carolina I wrote this book about five years after I was homeless with my oldest three kids and it has been almost 20 years now since it was published. For whatever else this book is, it is meant to be a story. A simple one of how a mom, a very young, impressionable mom, could go from being pretty normal and middle class mother to running from an ex to the ocean where she thought she could find a new life.  This book is meant to show that stories of homelessness and poverty are not easy - nor are they all the same. I may have been an idiot about some things, but I was never a drug addict, or a drinker, or a partier, or any of the things people think makes young women homeless. I was just kind of dumb about how easy it would be to get my life together after leaving my ex-husband. I thought every decision I had made was a smart one. Not all of them were.  From what I hear, this book is a pretty fast read and a pretty good story. Read it empathetically. I was young. And I didn't have help. My parents didn't want to help, even though they lived nearby and I couldn't write that in this book back when it was published because I would have been banished. Well, 25 years later, I've been banished - and I'm good with it. But you will hear all about that I'm sure in the next book.  Cheers and Happy Reading! Michelle Kennedy "Refreshingly candid Without A Net shows how frighteningly easy it can be for an ordinary, nonsubstance-abusing middleclass woman and devoted mother to find herself unable to afford a place to live." Los Angeles Times Book Review "[Kennedy s] sense of humor, ingenuity, and refreshing refusal to blame others for her mistakes won me over, and I quickly found myself rooting for her to succeed." Elle Magazine "A beautiful, heartfelt, and wonderful book." Dorothy Allison, author of Bastard Out of Carolina Michelle Kennedy's Salon piece about this experience touched a nerve: E-mails and letters poured in from readers who wanted the whole story. Kennedy was nominated for a Pushcart Prize for her work in Brain, Child magazine. Her work has also appeared in The New York Times and the Christian Science Monitor, and on National Public Radio. She also hosts a podcast called Backspace: Essays about Everything