At the Edge of the Haight
Gritty, empathetic tale of street kids, dysfunction, murder.
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A Lot or a Little?
The parents' guide to what's in this book.
What Parents Need to Know
Parents need to know that Katherine Seligman's At the Edge of the Haight, which received the 2019 PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction, is a bleak, harrowing, empathetic tale of 20-somethings living "outside" in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, who panhandle and hang around on nearby Haight Street. The novel is aimed at adults but also finding an audience with teens. Two of the four friends who band together for self-protection, including Maddy, the 20-year-old main character and narrator who's lived in the park since she was 18, are former foster kids who aged out of the system without acquiring survival skills beyond stealing, grifting, begging, and working the system. One of the others has a controlling mom into tough love, who periodically snatches him from the street (it doesn't last) but also sends him food and money. The other has apparently caring parents who are raising the child she conceived on the streets, but prefers the street to life with them. Gangs beat and extort the unhoused. Maddy's discovery of a stabbed, dying young man leads to many of the book's events, including being stalked by the stabber. The victim's parents try to get a bit of their lost son back by befriending Maddy and her three pals, some of whom regard them as natural prey and are happy to fleece and exploit them. The four friends and other characters smoke (weed and tobacco), drink alcohol, and take random drugs, including fentanyl and a mysterious pill that leaves one of them permanently impaired. They also use a lot of strong language (including "f--k," "s--t," "piss," and "asshole"). Two characters have sex; at least one of them gets crab lice as a result. A character is suspected of creepy sexual behavior with young girls. One adult character is a domestic abuser whose wife finally fled. Through it all, Maddy holds a vague, forlorn hope of having a real home someday. She takes it upon herself to look for clues to the murder because she feels it's the right thing to do, and tries to take care of the dog who's her main protector. There are no quick solutions or easy answers in this cautionary tale, but it's a revealing look at troubingly intractable issues.
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What's the Story?
Currently scraping out a marginal existence AT THE EDGE OF THE HAIGHT in San Francisco, 20-year-old Maddy Donaldo has been on the street since she aged out of the foster care system at 18. And while she longs for a real home and family, she's never known what it's like. She and three friends her age live in the bushes of Golden Gate Park, where one night her dog Root hears a noise and runs off. Maddy, following him, comes upon a dying, recently stabbed young man and an older one who probably did the stabbing. Since she was the last person to see the young stranger alive, she's soon dealing with his bereaved parents who've come to San Francisco to try to make sense of it all. And she takes it upon herself to unravel the clues of what happened and why, even as she's dodging the stabber. Meanwhile, there's the regular daily struggle to survive amid gangs, drugs, and lots of people making lots of questionable choices -- and Maddy's nagging worry that the mental illness that took her mother when Maddy was 8 will eventually come for her, too.
Is It Any Good?
Katherine Seligman's empathetic, harrowing portrait of young adults living on San Francisco's streets offers an emotionally complex look at issues and relationships that defy easy answers. Residing At the Edge of the Haight, narrator and former foster kid Maddy's discovery of a murder victim sets events, relationships, and perspectives in motion amid the grinding daily struggle for survival. Her friends are profoundly broken, but their determination to live on their own terms, whatever tradeoffs that involves, offers a lot to think about. There are lots of flashbacks to Maddy's childhood with her mentally ill mother and in foster families. Here, Maddy turns 18 and bails on foster care forever:
"Karen wanted me to work at a hair salon and learn a skill so I could support myself, and probably so I could take care of her hair that looked like a dried-up palm tree. But I was not a hair salon kind of person. I couldn’t tell what would make anyone look better.
"'Missy thinks she knows it all,' she said.
"She didn’t expect I’d stuff clothes in my school backpack and buy a bus ticket north. I never called or wrote a letter to tell her where I was. My life with her was over and there was nothing she could do. I sat awake all night on the bus, afraid to close my eyes while it climbed past the foothills, through the huge dirt fields of the valley and back over to the coast. I had heard about San Francisco, how you can just live your life, because everyone isn’t watching you all the time."
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Families can talk about the challenges facing characters in At the Edge of the Haight. How do those challenges compare with the sometimes romanticized view of street life as a grand adventure? Does believing that myth make things better or more difficult in real life?
Why do you think the author made Maddy's dog Root such a key character? What did Maddy's releationship with him show about her?
What do you think it would be like to live the way Maddy and her friends are living? Does the book make you feel any differently about the unhoused people you may pass on the street? Do you ever wonder what their story might be and how they got there?
Book Details
- Author: Katherine Seligman
- Genre: Contemporary Fiction
- Topics: Friendship
- Book type: Fiction
- Publisher: Algonquin
- Publication date: January 19, 2021
- Number of pages: 304
- Available on: Nook, Audiobook (unabridged), Hardback, iBooks, Kindle
- Last updated: April 11, 2021
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