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

while before he met Billy, his cause being from a traumatic experience when his daughter Jessie fell from a tree, so he turned to the streets and alcohol to ease the pain. On page 88, Old Bill's state of despair is demonstrated when he says, "But my Jessie, my sweet lovely Jessie, fell, and I fell with her, and I've been falling ever since."

Billy faces many challenges on the streets, such as the mains (finding a place to sleep and food to eat) but also the lingering thought of his abusive father, and Welfare officers questioning he's state of living conditions, and that happening made it a challenge for him the stay in Bendarat, so he had to lie his way out of it, with the help of Old Bill who gave Billy the simple gift of a key - which was the key to Old Bill's old house. Billie is soon able to overcome these challenges, with the help of his friends Caitlin and Old Bill.

Old Bill too has challenges to face through out the story, and although he overcomes them in the end, he doesn't ever forget them. Not only did Old Bill have a drinking problem, but he was haunted by the memories of his young daughter Jessie, and his wife, both of which died. Jessie, who was only ten years old, had fallen out of a tree and into a coma for 12 days, and then Old Bill and his wife were given papers to turn off her life support, and he did, to his dismay. "They switched off the machine and Jessie lay there for hours, still not moving, then she died."- page 89, when Jessie's life support was turned off. Old Bill's wife died "one year to the day after Jessie."(-page 90) him saying, "she died of signing the form.", which was the form that turned off Jessie's machine. After his wife's funeral, he had locked up the house, left everything the way it was and walked away, only ever returning as a homeless man to drunk out of his mind.

The issue of homelessness is revealed to be concerning, with 100,000+ people in Australia being homeless, the rate of homelessness being 49 out of every 10,000 people.

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

night.