Book Log 2010 # 11: Scratch Beginnings by Adam Shepherd

Fresh out of college, Adam Shepherd decides to do something he's been considering since high school - with only a small amount of personal gear and cash, he goes to a city he's never lived in before to see if, within a year, he can build himself up to having a job, a car, a place to live and future prospects for school or starting a business.

With that, Adam jumps a train and gets off in Charleston, South Carolina, and after a rough first night finds his way to a homeless shelter, and from there starts on his plan in earnest. Along the way we get to meet other residents of the shelter, co-workers and employers who both help and hinder Adam as he works towards self-sufficency.

There's a lot to like about a young guy who does something like this, and manages to write about it reasonably well to boot (the conclusion notwithstanding, which is pretty disjointed). But a couple of points did strike me as off. First, he looks at this as a rebuttal to books like Nickled and Dimed, which paint a much less rosy picture of getting out of the lower middle class, but I'm not sure it's as much of a rebuttal as he thinks it is. In this case, we have a young guy who is in good shape, no dependents and no debts, all very advantageous if you want to work your way out of the shelter. His results would not have been the same if he were a woman (and thus less likely to get the labor-intensive jobs he gets), had a child to support or past bills to pay.

Adam also claims that he's not going to use his education or contacts to help him, but I don't think that's something you can quite turn off. While he doesn't overtly use these things, it's not hard to see how his education (and his stable family life) give him an advantage over people who didn't have the same start, and thus didn't develop the same habits or traits that Adam has.

With those limitations, though, I did still enjoy the story, and think it has motivational potential for anyone who just needs a push to get out of present circumstances.