REVIEWS The Daily Sound Breakfast At Sally's Review Can a small handful of pennies make a difference? You wonder as you dump them into the kettle for the bell-ringer standing just outside the doorway of the store where you finished Christmas shopping. It was cold, but she seemed happy as she jingled and thanked everyone for their change. It's a mean old world these days and you can easily spare a pocketful of donation, but how can your few cents help anybody? Pick up the new book "Breakfast at Sally's" by Richard LeMieux. You'll see what change your change can make, and you'll wish you had more to offer. Once upon a time, Richard LeMieux had it all: a huge, well-stocked house, complete with the finest wines, rich foods, and electronics; a successful business that employed several people; a Significant Other who enjoyed world travel with LeMieux; and a family that loved him. Then, LeMieux's business took a hit. Trying to stay afloat, he borrowed money that he couldn't pay back. He spiraled into depression and his Significant Other left him. His family wanted nothing to do with him or his money-borrowing. Creditors took his house and almost all of his belongings, leaving him with a van, a dog, some clothing, and blankets. Homeless and sick at heart, LeMieux contemplated suicide but couldn't bear to leave his beloved dog, Willow, behind. Instead, he lived in his van, sleeping in church parking lots, begging for gas money, and eating at "Sally's" (the Salvation Army soup kitchen) in a city near Seattle. Led by a street philosopher-guide known just as C, LeMieux started to regain his dignity and explore his options. He consulted a sympathetic doctor who diagnosed depression and started treatment. He found friendship among the people who would have been "invisible" to him in his former life. Incredibly, LeMieux began to see that there were people worse-off than he, and he discovered a sense of gratitude. And through the kindness of other homeless people and a church filled with folks willing to take a risk, he put his life back together. When I picked up "Breakfast at Sally's", I was just killing time. It was just another book on my desk. I had no intention of even finishing it but within 10 minutes, I knew I wouldn't do anything else until I got to the end. Author Richard LeMieux's story is graceful and dignified, humble and un-self-conscious, gentle and cautious. LeMieux doesn't whine (although there is plenty cause for it), he's apologetic at times, and he takes responsibility for his predicament. What makes his story so good, though, is the one thing that LeMieux hammers home: what happened to him could happen to any of us. That sobering fact and today's daily news makes this an absolutely-can't-miss book everyone should read. "Breakfast at Sally's" is, surprisingly, a great
book to read during the holidays and during the winter. It will make
you remember that the change you drop in the bucket is no drop in the
bucket when it comes to changing someone's life. Charlotte Observer BREAKFAST AT SALLY'S: ONE HOMELESS MAN'S INSPIRATIONAL
JOURNEY ALL YOU CAN EAT: HOW HUNGRY IS AMERICA? By Joel Berg. Seven Stories, 320 pages. $22.95. Two new books offer vastly different looks at problems of hunger and homelessness, but serve up a reminder during this holiday season about the needs of the less fortunate. "Breakfast at Sally's" takes a personal approach to homelessness because its author, Richard LeMieux, embarked on the book while he was homeless himself. "Sally" refers to the Salvation Army soup kitchen in Washington state, a friendly way station for many of the people LeMieux encounters with his ever-present companion, "Willow the Wonder Dog." LeMieux had been a businessman whose company collapsed. Evicted from his home, he eventually wound up living in his van. He wrote of screwing up his courage the first time he had to beg. Many people cursed him or ignored him. But later that day, a stranger approached him and gave him all the money in her purse, $64.50. It can be that type of existence. While the writing felt a little thin at times, the best thing LeMieux does is simply tell his story, that is, put a face and give life to homeless people like himself — people society so often simply ignores. Some are quite memorable. Topping that list is the ever-present man called "C." Whether quoting Yeats in the park while eating peanut butter out of a jar with his fingers or helping another homeless man out of the rain, C serves as a guide, sounding board and spiritual friend. LeMieux doesn't shy away from his own depression and suicidal thoughts. Or the time when he asked for money only to be rejected but snidely offered money for Willow. He refused. But there are moments of human decency, too. LeMieux, seeking brief shelter in a hospital, chances upon a patient who befriends him. The Salvation Army workers are good-natured and concerned, even organizing (at C's insistence) a weekly softball league for the homeless. And a church pastor helped him find his way out of homelessness. Despite his situation, there is little anger in LeMieux's book. Not so with Joel Berg, an activist and leader of the New York City Coalition Against Hunger. His book is a polemic with statistics — lots and lots of statistics. The book is thick with them, to the point where the sheer volume tends to take away from the significance of any one fact. That's a shame, because they help back up Berg's interest in detailing the extent of hunger in America and how major institutions largely fail miserably in dealing with the problem. He also offers practical solutions for hunger. Berg starts with a number: More than 35 million people, about one third of whom are children, have what the government calls "food insecurity." These are people who suffer from hunger or struggle at the brink of hunger. He details the country's history of tackling hunger and spends a good deal of time on the flawed but necessary food stamp system. Berg also touches on poverty, obesity and welfare reform. The mainstream media and well-meaning but mostly ineffective charities also come in for criticism. As Berg puts it, "food pantries and soup kitchens are forced to ration food because they don't have enough resources to meet the growing demand." That forces them to reduce their hours of operation, limit portion size or turn people away. Berg serves up multifaceted solutions to ending hunger. But his main emphasis centers on having a president be as committed to ending hunger as John F. Kennedy was to putting a man on the moon. Berg calls for bold action to reinvent the existing federal food-related
programs into one larger, more efficient entity. The solution, he insists,
is as imperative as it is attainable. Christian Science Monitor A man once wealthy learns to live among the homeless. Breakfast at Sally's: One Homeless Man's Inspirational Journey By Richard LeMieux Skyhorse Publishing 433 pp. $24.95 We're all aware of them, though most often only as shadows in the backgrounds of our busy lives. Once upon a time, it was that way for Richard LeMieux as well. "I had seen the poor before, of course," he writes. "I had given to street people many times — a quarter here, a quarter there. As an affluent businessman, I had sent checks to the Salvation Army and the Union Gospel Mission ... I had seen [the homeless] late at night ... moving across the landscape like nomads." But suddenly LeMieux was given a perspective most of us will be fortunate enough never to have: He became one of them. Once a wealthy publishing executive living in a huge beachfront home with boats, cars, and "all the toys a man would want," at the age of 59 LeMieux saw his fortunes dramatically reverse. His business went under when the Internet rendered the directories he published obsolete and he lost everything. Destitute and plunged into a debilitating depression, he lost his friends and family as well. ("You must feel like Job himself," a psychiatrist told him.) Finally, all that was left to LeMieux were a beat-up van and his small white dog, Willow. And so begins the saga that LeMieux chronicles in Breakfast at Sally's: One Homeless Man's Inspirational Journey. LeMieux almost gives up right at the outset. Poised to jump off Washington's Tacoma Narrows Bridge on Christmas night 2002, he turns back when he hears Willow barking frantically and reflects that it would be unfair to desert the one being who has stayed loyal to him. So he returns to the van and launches on what turns out to be a voyage of discovery. He sleeps in church parking lots and accepts free meals from any charity that will offer one. (Hence the title of his book: "Sally's" is the Salvation Army, one of LeMieux's regular stops.) Living and moving with the poor, LeMieux's first discovery is how much collegiality exists among their ranks. One of his first friends is "C," a brainy drifter with substance-abuse problems who shows LeMieux the ropes and shares generously with him, even once treating LeMieux to the opera. As he travels with "C" through his world he encounters drunks, druggies, and people on the run from the law. He also meets (and often they are the same people) the traumatized, the frightened, and the depressed. He sees homeless families and watches parents doing their best to nurture children in that strange, twilight landscape. Without homes or addresses, LeMieux comes to realize, all these people are "financial lepers, third-class citizens, untouchables" who cannot so much as cash checks or qualify for most jobs. "We may be the most feared and misunderstood people in America," he thinks. And yet, throughout it all, LeMieux also bears witness to astonishing kindness. There is the elderly woman who presses a few of her own dollars into his hand, the hospital patient who — despite her own plight — pours verbal warmth on him, the nurse who pays for him to stay in a motel, and, finally, the minister who lets him sleep in his church and encourages him to write this book. It gets him through an ordeal that lasts a year and a half. "I get a little help here, a little help there," he tells a fellow indigent who marvels that LeMieux, at his age, endures the rigors of such a life. LeMieux never really offers a satisfactory explanation of how it came to be that a man once so well connected lost all his ties to society. (Particularly hard to understand is how all three of his children could have turned him away, even though he explains that depression altered him much for the worse.) This is a lapse that to some degree harms the credibility of LeMieux's tale, as it's hard for a reader not to wonder if there's some important piece of the story not being told. Also, by the book's end, "C" has vanished without a trace, so we must take LeMieux's word for any accounts of adventures with him. However, despite such gaps, "Breakfast at Sally's" has much to offer. For those who yearn to believe in the basic decency of most human beings, this book provides abundant evidence that there are good people out there and that their efforts at well-doing are not wasted. Also, LeMieux's story does much to humanize the homeless, reminding us that behind each of them there is a story — perhaps even an astonishing one. Most of all, however, "Breakfast at Sally's" is an argument for compassion. None of us can ever fully fathom the struggles of others. Nor can we begin to know how much the smallest of kind gestures might ease another's pain. But LeMieux's story does remind us how essential it is to try. The New York Times ONCE, Richard LeMieux was the envy of all his friends. He owned a publishing firm in Washington State that produced medical and university directories. He also owned a beachfront house, three boats and assorted luxury cars. But the rise of the Internet contributed to his downfall, and in 2002, Mr. LeMieux's business failed. In short order, he lost almost everything he had held dear. He became estranged from family members. The bank foreclosed on his house and evicted him. At 59, he was left with his clothes, his Oldsmobile van and a little white pooch he called Willow the Wonder Dog. For 18 months, Mr. LeMieux was homeless. In what can be seen as a cautionary tale for our time, he recounts his descent in "Breakfast at Sally's: One Homeless Man's Inspirational Story" (Skyhorse Publishing, $24.95). Mr. LeMieux slept in his van in church parking lots in Bremerton, Wash. He hung out at the local Salvation Army, which he and other homeless people affectionately called "Sally's." He started writing his book on a discarded manual typewriter. The pastor of the First United Methodist Church ultimately allowed Mr. LeMieux and Willow to live in the church kitchen for nine months, where they served as "security guards." The congregation then helped him move into an apartment, where he finished his book. In the introduction Mr. LeMieux says that "about 98 percent" of the events and stories recounted in the book are factual. He acknowledges changing some names to "protect the innocent," and altering certain time frames to "make the story more accessible." The book reads like a novel, with the narrative moving in scene-by-scene sequences replete with lengthy dialogue between the author and people he meets. But it has the ring of truth, and an uplifting message that endures on its intrinsic merits. Mr. LeMieux's account of his homelessness is convincing because it is neither overwrought nor sensationalist. On Thanksgiving Day 2002, he found himself begging for money in front of a grocery store where he estimated he had spent $192,000 during the preceding 20 years. Most of the store's patrons ignore or disdain his pleas for help. One of them calls him "a bum." A security guard orders him to move on. But as he is leaving the store parking lot, an elderly woman in a red coat gives him $64.50 — and a renewed faith in humanity. Mr. LeMieux goes on to describe scavenging through garbage bins in search of discarded clothes, appliances, and partially smoked cigarettes. He introduces us to a menagerie of colorful characters like "C," a pot-smoking asphalt angel who quotes Jean-Paul Sartre, Joseph Campbell and Franz Kafka; Andy, an alcoholic former logger who gets himself arrested by the local police 44 times in a year so he can spend the corresponding nights drying out in a hospital ward; and Karen — like him, once accustomed to owning nice things — who commits suicide by jumping off a bridge shortly after arriving at the Salvation Army. Mr. LeMieux also recounts his personal emotional battles, including a suicide attempt he aborted when he heard Willow barking from inside his van. In March 2003, he received a diagnosis of "clinical depression," and was subsequently given a prescription for Zoloft. Mr. LeMieux appears to have difficulty recalling many salient details of his past life. He summarizes his past in a series of flashbacks interspersed throughout his narrative. And he is annoyingly sketchy in accounting for the collapse of his business and the details of his family life. (At the end, he does describe scenes of reconciliation with his children.) He says his memory losses are byproducts of his depression, which makes his plight only more poignant. In the chronicle, Mr. LeMieux, once a Republican fund-raiser, becomes a born-again Democrat and an authoritative advocate for the millions of Americans who are homeless or living in poverty. But what makes his book so compelling is his nonpartisan reportage. Mr. LeMieux's profiles of his homeless peers debunk frivolous stereotypes and illuminate a sobering reality that may become increasingly common in America. His anecdotal evidence suggests that homelessness is often caused by economic, social and emotional catastrophes beyond any individual's control. Given the state of the economy and the likelihood of continuing repercussions, his book is timely. He duly reminds us of John Steinbeck's observation in another book about the down and out, "The Grapes of Wrath:" "If you're in trouble or hurt or need — go to the poor people. They're the only ones that'll help — the only ones." THE OLYMPIAN The financial panic that is gripping the nation reminds
me of my mother's stories about growing up during the Depression. Seattle Post Intelligence LeMieux had it made, then lost it all. The Bremerton man, a former sportswriter who ran a publishing business, went from living in a mansion to being homeless in a battered van. One Thanksgiving found him begging outside the same Poulsbo supermarket where he used to spend thousands. The Salvation Army (Sally's) and treatment for severe depression finally helped LeMieux to climb back to a normal life. This inspiring, eye-opening memoir is timely amid grim and grimmer economic news. Booklist — David Pitt Publishers Weekly "Sally's" is what the homeless call the Salvation Army's soup kitchen. LeMieux is a first-time author whose memoir chronicles his descent as a conservative publisher who loses his company, his home, his wife and kids, and all sense of hope, until he is called back from a potential suicide by the insistent barking of his beloved dog, Willow. Together, they embark on what is truly the "inspirational journey" of this book's title, living in an old van and moving from town to town. Using a beat-up typewriter, LeMieux captures not only what day-to-day life is like for those whose lives have been broken by economic hardship ("from the millions of teenagers on the street to the millions of old heroes stored away in nursing homes across the country"), but also the rich inner life and the wellsprings of hope that he finds in the many people he skillfully and sensitively describes — "people are as real as you can find anywhere." And his own experiences with constant depression, the mental health system that exists for the homeless, and his discovery of life and a sense of hope in his new home of Bremerton, Wash., combine into a moving tale that cuts through the stereotypes of homeless living. (Nov.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. KIRKUS REVIEWS Poignant account of an unexpectedly homeless man's road
to rebirth, accompanied by his trusty canine companion. The Salvation Army “Once
I started this book, I could not put it down. Richard’s book
has a message that needs to be told.” |