Tramps, Beggars and Sloths

We are all homeless beggars. Everybody is searching for comfort, money or love. Even you and I.

But Martin is a gentle tramp on a strange quest. With his world in a rucksack, he roams England in pursuit of Care in the Community and of Old Stompy, the stuffed Patagonian giant sloth donated long ago to a museum by his eccentric grandfather. Let us follow his progress as he wheedles and bluffs, helps and hinders, uses and is used.

He settles for now in Liverpool, where he is torn between three women. Kathy is his former teenage sweetheart, devious and alcoholic. Alison is a scruffy bisexual drop-out, loyal but accident-prone. Fran is a neurotic housewife, oddly convinced that life has a meaning. Worse still, Martin must survive the friendly advances of Mr Snowman and his gang of ham-fisted cocaine dealers.

Over the unexpected resolution of these conflicts looms the smirking, bear-like, enigmatic figure of the giant sloth. Could Old Stompy know the answers? Perhaps true love, safety and the community are still out there. Try this unusual homeless romance to share in the search.

Adam Wilderness wrote his second novel, Tramps, Beggars and Sloths, to inspect the ’condition of England’ in the post-welfare era, to have a bit of fun on behalf of outcasts at the expense of the rich and the powerful, and to satisfy the nagging urge to write a surreal modern love story.

It takes one to know one. Adam has been tramp, beggar and sloth himself by turns. He has both dined and cooked at some of the best soup kitchens, with drifters, prostitutes and a whisky priest who explained the sixteenth chapter of Luke to him. His ignorance of the world inhabited by billionaires and celebrities is both blissful and profound, but he knows where the shoe pinches on a long walk to the next town. Social exclusion has its positive side, he whispers; it turns a mere writer into a potential human being.

Search ’Adam Wilderness’ on Amazon for a complete list of this author’s e-books and print editions. He wishes you success with your own life’s work, whatever it may be, and promises to pray for the eventual repose of your soul whenever you toss a small coin into a beggar’s hat.