Homeless

by Jane Bow

Shortlisted for a British Rubery Books Award in 2024

When a woman caught breaking into a Century stone house won’t tell anyone her name, not police, not social workers, not even a lawyer, the judge remands her to a mental health hospital’s forensic psychiatric unit for assessment.

Here, on a ward peopled by big Stan, a psychopathic rapist, tiny psychotic Lucy and others, cat-and-mouse sessions with psychologist Dr. Elaine Price lead both women deep into the uncertain terrain of identity where laws, superimposed, do not always deliver justice.

Tensions on her ward escalate.

Meanwhile, Dr. Price, an over-stressed, recently separated mother of two and Homeless’s narrator, is losing everything she has relied on at home.

Finally, struggling to draw her own lines in the sand, she commits a crime. And then writes Homeless so that, if she is ever caught, her children might understand.