Tom Grady is a retired Army veteran sleeping in his car-unseen by the city's "counts," and one tow away from losing the last thing that still feels like home. When he demands a simple, humane policy-safe parking where people won't be criminalized for closing their eyes-he's shoved into the city's favorite weapons: boilerplate empathy, "partner agencies," liability talk, and endless waiting.
But Tom doesn't stay invisible. He steps up at a City Hall testimony night and forces the room to hear what the system keeps pretending is "theory": real bodies, real exhaustion, real danger-right now.
Written from lived experience-the author was homeless while writing it-this is a tense, human, unflinching story about how quickly a bureaucracy can become lethal... and what happens when one man decides to make the city count its ghosts.