EFJ Summer Reading

You'll recall that two weeks ago, this blog recommended a summer reading list from Education for Justice (EFJ). Today, we give you the second book (now a major motion picture) from the EFJ list, The Soloist, by Steve Lopez, covering the themes of dignity of the human person, homelessness, and mental illness.

Description from EFJ: When Steve Lopez saw Nathaniel Ayers playing his heart out on a two-string violin on Los Angeles' skid row, he found it impossible to walk away. More than thirty years earlier, Ayers had been a promising classical bass student at Juilliard -- ambitious, charming, and also one of the few African-Americans -- until he gradually lost his ability to function, overcome by schizophrenia. When Lopez finds him, Ayers is homeless, paranoid, and deeply troubled, but glimmers of that brilliance are still there.

In the process of trying to save Ayers, Lopez finds that his own life is changing, and his sense of what one man can accomplish in the lives of others begins to expand him in new ways.