Summary Of The Simple Gift By Steven Herrick

The Simple Gift by Steven Herrick explores the causes and challenges of homelessness in today's youth. It highlights the struggles that a victim of homelessness would go through, such as finding a place to sleep every night, and finding a source of food and money. The Simple Gift also showed some causes of homelessness, which were demonstrated in the book through out the story.

Through the view of 16 year old protagonist Billy, the reader is shown his struggles of being a homeless teen. Billy was in a state of homelessness because he ran away from "Nowheresville", and from his abusive father. This is proven on page 10, where in Billy's point of view it states, "The wind and rain hits you in the face with the force of a father's punch..." which implies that Billy knows what the force of a father's punch feels like. His abusive father is one of the main causes for Billy being homeless, and why Billy had hitched a train to Bendarat to start a new life.

In Bendarat, one of the first people he meets is Old Bill, another victim of homelessness. Old Bill had been homeless for a

These stunning factors are caused by job losses, financial situations, depression, family breakdown, mental illnesses, and isolation. Approximately 28,700 of those people are under the age of 18, and around 50,000 people under 25. The challenges these people face are extremely severe compared to Billy's challenges of homelessness. Within 2-3 days of being homeless, youth are sexually abused, and within 5 days, are using drugs and smoking.

The Simple Gift explores the causes and challenges of being homeless to the reader by putting through real-life situations, such as abuse, and alcohol, and the struggles that most homeless people go through on the streets, sometimes not being able to food or even a place to stay for the