A Decent Life Is the Train That Hasn?t Hit You

Plot can also be a pitfall for a journalist. When writing about lives punctuated by violence, ruination, and stressful encounters with civic, medical, and commercial institutions, it is easy to lose sight of the person at the center of the drama, the one who is constantly making choices and recalibrating her sense of her life and possibilities. Boo, who has also reported extensively in poor neighborhoods across the United States, has always focused precisely on her subjects? choices. When we first meet them, they seem like the heroes and heroines of 19^th-century novels: They are on the make, or they hope to be, and they have a complex view of their lives and their place in the social landscape. As Boo follows them around, we see how much they are able to make of their limited and sometimes downright lousy options?and we also see the kind of daily binds that make it so difficult, when you start at the bottom, to get economic purchase.

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