Squat.Squat Taylor Field B & H Publishing Group, 127 Ninth Avenue North, MSN (1) (MicroSoft Network) A family of Internet-based services from Microsoft, which includes a search engine, e-mail (Hotmail), instant messaging (Windows Live Messaging) and a general-purpose portal with news, information and shopping (MSN Directory). 114, Nashville, TN, 37234 0805432922 $14.99 www.BHPublishingGroup.com www.amazon.com Squat is a compassionate but realistic view of life lived by society's throw-aways, the homeless. This powerfully written story begins in a doctor's waiting room. In the opening chapter, an 11-year-old boy (already struggling with mental disorders--OCD comes to mind) is trying hard to look as though he can actually read the picture book story of Abraham and Issac, which he holds close to his face. The boy touches the corners of the page counting, "one, two, three" and again--three times in all--touching the page with smudgy smudge v. smudged, smudg·ing, smudg·es v.tr. 1. To make dirty, especially in one small area. 2. To smear or blur (something). 3. fingertips "Fingertips" is a 1963 number-one hit single recorded live by "Little" Stevie Wonder for Motown's Tamla label. Wonder's first hit single, "Fingertips" was the first live, non-studio recording to reach number-one on the Billboard Pop Singles chart in the United States. while wishing that he, too, had a guardian angel for protection, and wishing that he could be the guardian angel who saves Issac from his father's knife. The boy sits beside his self-absorbed mother, a woman who is in the throes throe n. 1. A severe pang or spasm of pain, as in childbirth. See Synonyms at pain. 2. throes A condition of agonizing struggle or trouble: a country in the throes of economic collapse. of making a life decision which will have extreme--and negative--consequences for the rest of the boy's life. Her decision made, she yanks him bodily from the doctor's waiting room, out the door and into a future that he intuitively understands will be a precarious existence at best: Squid does not have a guardian angel to shield him from his future. Squat takes the reader through a day in the life of Squid, the boy grown to adulthood, living out the consequences of a neglected, unsheltered childhood along side other street people in an abandoned, boarded-up tenement in New York City New York City: see New York, city. New York City City (pop., 2000: 8,008,278), southeastern New York, at the mouth of the Hudson River. The largest city in the U.S. . Taylor Field's writing shows up-close the "smells, squaller squall 1 n. A loud, harsh cry. intr.v. squalled, squall·ing, squalls To scream or cry loudly and harshly. and ugliness" of the homeless. He describes--almost too realistically--the abuses of alcohol, drugs, self-inflicted abuses--and abuses inflicted on each other--the street's means 0f escape from hopelessness. Field tells his story faithfully and compassionately because he knows Squid, and he cares about him. He knows why Squid and the others live there and what brought them there, because he has lived and ministered among them for more than twenty years TWENTY YEARS. The lapse of twenty years raises a presumption of certain facts, and after such a time, the party against whom the presumption has been raised, will be required to prove a negative to establish his rights. 2. : Taylor Field is the pastor of Graffiti Community Ministries, East Seventh Street Baptist Church, on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Buy and read Squat. You won't look at a homeless person An individual who lacks housing, including one whose primary residence during the night is a supervised public or private facility that provides temporary living accommodations; an individual who is a resident in transitional housing; or an individual who has as a primary residence a in the same way, ever again. All proceeds from Squat will go to Graffiti Community Ministries. Read about Taylor Field's ministry at The Squat website: http://squatbook.wordpress.com Vicki Talley McCollum, Reviewer http://www.vickitalleymccollum.blogspot.com |
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