A Meeting in the Rain

For Nancy McCradie, living homeless on the streets of Santa Barbara was both the adventure and the challenge of a lifetime. As a newborn, she'd slept in the back of a Buick with her parents during a housing crisis after World War II. Three decades later, Nancy was forced to live in a camper herself so her own family could survive, and she maintained that tenuous existence for almost thirty-five years.

This is an account of one woman's fight for the rights of homeless individuals in one of the most affluent communities in California. Nancy was at the forefront of political action during the height of the Reagan Administration, engaging in acts of street theater and subversion and helping turn the riffraff of Santa Barbara into seasoned political activists. At a time when the homeless were barred from voting and could be arrested for sleeping outdoors, Nancy was determined to bring attention to a segment of society that the nation would rather forget.

...even if she had to walk across the continent to do it.

A Meeting in the Rain is a tale of resilience, grit, and the refusal to accept a community's treatment of its poorest citizens, told with striking eloquence and a dose of wicked humor.