HOME STREET HOME - The Virginia Beach Chronicles
By Georgia Saunders
A Member of HamptonRoadsWriters.org
Georgia Saunders makes almost double the royalties when you buy her books from this page than when you buy on Amazon. The purchase links here go to Create Space, which is a subsidiary of Amazon. You can be assured of the same high quality customer service from Create Space as you are accustomed to at Amazon. Amazon is able to offer a slightly lower price at times, but be aware that the author earns only about half the royalties when you buy on the Amazon page. Thanks for understanding. As a formerly homeless person trying to stay afloat in new digs, losing half of the royalties to Amazon is not small thing, whereas the customer saves only a few dollars. PLEASE CONSIDER THIS when making your purchase. THANK YOU
 | WHAT THE COMMUNITY IS SAYING ABOUT HOME STREET HOME - THE VIRGINIA BEACH CHRONICLES... I just finished reading the book today! I could not put it down - it was WONDERFUL! I felt like I was there with everyone & everything as it took place. It gave me different insights to things I could not imagine going on. I cried at the end; when you were talking about Little Bear as I knew who you were really talking about." ----- Alice Dagenhardt of "Hope in the Upper Room", Virginia Beach
"...a uniformly rugged but redemptive novel about life among the homeless in Hampton Roads."
----- Bill Ruehlmann, professor emeritus of journalism/communications at Virginia Wesleyan College and book columnist for the Virginia Pilot.
*See the link below to Dr. Ruehlmann's complete review of Home Street Home - The Virginia Beach Chronicles in the August 29, 2011 "Sunday Break" section of the Virginia Pilot.
"She provides an authentic picture from what I know of homelessness on the streets. Her story puts a human face on the whole issue of homelessness."
----- Jeffrey Andrews, retired Maring Corps major and president of Hope in the Upper Room, a non-profit devoted to giving the homeless a "hand up", not a "hand out".
"The book is realistic. It's not amatuerish, nor does it seek sympathy. There is definitely a market for this."
---- Anne Meek, board secretary for the Cultural Alliance of Greater Hampton Roads
$15.95 Click Here to Purchase this Book from an Amazon.com company
THE PURCHASE PAGE FOR THIS SITE IS YOUR PURCHASE AT THE ABOVE LINK IS BACKED BY THE REPUTATION OF AMAZON.COM FOR QUICK SERVICE AND SECURE TRANSMISSION OF INFORMATION
From the back cover... At 60, Ella Migliore, a gentle soul from a middle class background, finds her security wiped out by the 2008 market crash. Long estranged from her nuclear family, she is thrown into the brutal world of homelessness - a shadowy hell that swallows people bit by bit, even in the well-manicured streets of the Virginia Beach Oceanfront. Bravely trying to make the best of a bad situation, she downplays the dangers until she learns firsthand just how vicious street life can be. Menaced by ex-cons at a free dining hall, bedding down on drenched church steps after a Tidewater tornado-watch storm, and terrified by lawless men in a homeless camp, she digs deep to find strength to carry on. |
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 | Volume II of Home Street Home is now available!
$15.95 plus S&H Click Here to Purchase Volume II - Blondie's Journals Retrieved
THE PURCHASE PAGE FOR THIS SITE IS YOUR PURCHASE AT THE ABOVE LINK IS BACKED BY THE REPUTATION OF AMAZON.COM FOR QUICK SERVICE AND SECURE TRANSMISSION OF INFORMATION These are the journals that Blondie threw in the dumpster in Home Street Home Volume I - The Virginia Beach Chronicles. Retrieved by the author, Georgia Saunders, and containing all the letters from that she received from her half-sister Janine that explain the mysteries of her young life, these documents are now published in book form. Blondie's journals chronicle her fall into homelessness, her adjustment to the life in the streets; and her rocky love affair with the street hustler, Gabriel, whom she saw as her archangel sent to protect her. Blondie has her eyes on a higher calling - to help the homeless. But how can she help them by being homeless herself? And is her devotion to Gabriel, despite his past infidelity and his present suspicious actions, a misguided faithfulness? - A passion hopelessly misspent?
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 | Volume III of Home Street Home is now available! $15.95 plus S&H Please Click Here to Order Volume III from Our E-store
THE PURCHASE PAGE OF THIS SITE IS
YOUR PURCHASE AT THE ABOVE LINK IS BACKED BY THE REPUTATION OF AMAZON.COM FOR QUICK SERVICE AND SECURE TRANSMISSION OF INFORMATION
In the first two volumes of Home Street Home, we heard from Ella Migliore, brand new to the streets, and Eva Medina, aka, "Blondie", with two years under her belt. Neither of these women have been on the streets as long as Barbara Jean O'Malley, aka, "Cutie Doll", who has been "Queen of These Streets" for over a decade. When Miss Alice Harrell of Virginia Beach starts praying for Cutie Doll, things are set in motion spiritually for the diva of the Oceanfont homeless community to learn how her leadership qualities are being called upon by a Higher Power to help the young street girls to turn their lives around. |
My goal in writing the Home Street Home Trilogy was to paint a faithful portrait of the beach homeless community,
"warts and all." There has been no attempt to spin the information in favor of anyone. Though all my characters are
fictional, I tried to portray the typical personalities found among the street people. None of my characters portray
any real individuals - only "types" found at the beach. (There are three exceptions to that: Miss Alice, Debbie
Maloney and Dallas gave me permission to use their real names.) I tried to tell it like it is. I would love to hear
your comments about the books.
Home Street Home - The Virginia Beach Chronicles now available
Home Street Home Volume II - Blondie's Journals Retrieved now available
Home Street Home Volume III - Cutie Doll Tells All now available
Thank you for visiting my novel's webpage. You can reach me at georgiasaunders1@aol.com
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Georgia Saunders is a member of Hampton Roads Writers. http://hamptonroadswriters.org/georgiasaunders.php |
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The Seagulls are Not Quite as Mean to Each Other as the Homeless Often are When Corraled into a Tiny Shelter Waiting to Load the Busses | This Beautiful Pier is the One Cutie Doll Used to Sleep Under With Her Friends They Heated Their Food Under the Hot Water Drain From the Restaurant on Top of the Pier |
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Home Street Home - The Virginia Beach Chronicles
Home Street Home Volume II - Blondie's Journals Retrieved
and
Home Street Home Volume III - Cutie Doll Tells All
are also available on Amazon.com
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Cape Henry, Home of Fort Story On Far Side is the Chesapeake Bay, On Frontside is the Atlantic Ocean
| King Neptune Presides Over the Boardwalk And the Benches Where People Try to Sleep at Night Until The Po-Po Run Them Off
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The Beautiful Convention Center Across This Street There Used to be Benches Where Ella and Other Homeless Slept | View from the Boardwalk Looking out into the Expanse of the Atlantic Ocean Ships Often Pass Headed in or out of Chesapeake Bay |
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Home Street Home Art by "Gypsy" Alvarado of Virginia Beach Homeless camps have sprung up in the woods of the Virginia Beach Oceanfront. During the time frame of the novel, there was a camp near the "Bird Creek " Golf course on Bird Neck Road. These wetlands are home to Black Widow spiders, Brown Recluse spiders, Copperhead snakes, Rattlers and Cottonmouths. These natural predators added to the danger of living in the camps, but none of them were as dangerous as the human predators who menaced the woods. First sleeping on the steps of the Methodist Church two blocks off the beach, the newly homeless Ella thinks she might be better off out of the public eye. Too new to know the history of the camps in the woods, she soon seeks to join the squatters there - people she will discover are none too friendly. |  |
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 | Home Street Home Art by "Gypsy" Alvarado of Virginia Beach. Ella, in her blue ball cap, discovers how vicious life can be in the streets of Virginia Beach. When she finds an abandoned camp she calls "Twin Pines" in the woods, she has an all-too-real and frightening vision of a girl tied up between the identical trees. Is her intuition signaling her about a dreadful attack that took place here? She begins to wonder if the perpetrators are still living in these woods. Blondie clings to her boyfriend,Gabriel, still worried about a carefree party girl named Cutie Doll who carries it like she has it made - long accustomed to life in the streets. Is Gabriel two-timing Blondie again with the "Queen of these streets?" Blondie's old Ford Econoline van, fitted out hippie-style, helps keep a roof over her and Gabriel's heads whenever there is no money to pay the rent at a hotel. |
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MORE ABOUT VOLUME II - BLONDIE'S JOURNALS RETRIEVED
Georgia here. Let me tell you more about how I came by these journals. Blondie, homeless in Virginia Beach for more than two years, was well-known for the diaries she was writing in constantly. She never let anyone read them, only revealing to the curious that those journals recorded her experiences from the time she'd first come to Virginia Beach in a car packed with her household goods; and met Gabriel, her knight in shining armor. Her relationship with this street hustler, a thug with a saintly side she couldn't give up on, included the rough ride through a triangle when Gabriel had given her a rival in the much younger, street-wise, Cutie Doll.
When Blondie threw her journals in the dumpster one day on the Virginia Beach Oceanfront, yours truly, Georgia Saunders, was sitting at the fast food place on 21st and Pacific enjoying a morning cup of coffee. I noticed Blondie’s red van parked next to the dumpster. Then she came out of the restaurant with a cup of tea in her hands. I was surprised to see her open the side door of her hippy van and pull out an armful of spiral notebooks which she then proceeded to toss into the big green dumpster. She heaved them almost ceremoniously, one by one – as if she were banishing them from her life. Of course I just had to retrieve them once she'd left.
Anyway, before you think I stole her journals – a few days later I got a chance to tell her I'd pulled them out of the trash. She seemed surprised to hear that anyone cared about those old notebooks. She didn’t want anything back, but I finally convinced her to keep the letters from Germany. I found those beautifully penned airmail letters tucked into the pocket of one notebook. She graciously gave me permission to publish the journals, saying they really belonged to me now because of what I'd gone through to get them. And I went through plenty.
This middle-aged author actually had to get into that nasty dumpster to retrieve them all. The time in the dumpster – well, the less said the better, I guess, but it was a slippery affair, as it was obvious from the smell that they had just dumped the remnants of the ice cream machine. Besides that, the whole time I was in there, I was worried the crew from the fast food place would see me and call the cops. I made it out, though, and after a good long shower, I was ready to find out exactly what I had in my possession. I hope you will enjoy this second volume and will appreciate what it took to bring it to you.
