Those Who Wander: America’s Lost Street Kids

Written by Vivian Ho

Narrated by Emily Woo Zeller

Award-winning journalist Vivian Ho exposes a shattering true-crime story, shedding light on America’s new lost generation.

In 2015, the senseless Bay Area murders of twenty-three-year-old Audrey Carey and sixty-seven-year-old Steve Carter were personal tragedies for the victims’ families. But they also shed light on a more complex issue. The killers were three drifters scrounging for a living among a burgeoning counterculture population. Soon this community of runaways and transients became vulnerable scapegoats of a modern witch hunt. The supposedly progressive residents of San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury, only two generations removed from the Summer of Love, now feared all of society’s outcasts as threats.

In Those Who Wander, Vivian Ho delves deep into a rising subculture that’s changing the very fabric of her city and all of urban America. Moving beyond the disheartening statistics, she gives voices to these young people—victims of abuse, failed foster care, mental illness, and drug addiction. She also doesn’t ignore the threat they pose to themselves and to others as a dangerous dark side emerges. With alarming urgency, she asks what can be done to save the next generation of America’s vagabond youth.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brilliance Audio
• Release date: Sep 1, 2019
• ISBN: 9781721372720

Vivian Ho

Vivian Ho is an award-winning journalist who has written for the San Francisco Chronicle, the Guardian, Topic, and the Boston Globe. Raised in New England, she currently lives in San Francisco.

Reviews for Those Who Wander

[bookanonjeff · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

"Not All Those Who Wander Are Lost" ... But Some Are. Ho does an excellent job of focusing on one particular tale - of a trio of homeless kids in the Bay Area convicted of a pair of murders - while exploring young adult homelessness generally quite well. Maybe it was because the version I read was the Audible, but there didn't seem to be many citations throughout the book, and indeed Ho waxes poetic and goes into editorial mode quite often - a bit too much, for my own personal tastes, particularly when making various claims that really do need supporting evidence to be provided. (Checking the text based version of the book I also have, I do in fact see that the notes/ bibliography is a bit too sparse for my thinking.) Which is ultimately what dropped this a star for me. Other than the sparse bibliography and a too much editorializing, this truly was a beautifully written book that highlights an oft-overlooked circumstance and does a stupendous job showing these people as the humans they are - warts and all. Very much recommended.