An Unflinching Portrait of Life on the Streets

Providing a rare first-hand glimpse into the life of a homeless person, Who Lied and Said We Left the Garden of Eden is a lucid, eye-opening chronicle of author Daniel Martin's time on the mean streets of Texas and California. As a teenager, he turns to drugs for relief from his Christian fundamentalist upbringing - a tactic that plunges him into escalating burglaries to pay for his high of choice: speed. Before he's 18, Martin has become a ward of the state. Soon, he finds himself living out of a shopping cart, funding his addiction by selling his body. And that's just for starters.

But there's a light at the end of this long, dark tunnel. After an array of treatment and rehabilitation programs, Martin finds the strength to escape his circumstances following a stint in Norwalk State Hospital's Cider House (made famous in Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest). How he did it - and the belief that his experience proves it's possible for anyone - lies at the crux of the book's powerful message of hope, faith and perseverance.

Interspersed throughout his harrowing ordeal, Martin reveals the small courtesies that sustained him from various "angels" he met along the way. In the process, he uncovers the essential humanity that endures underneath even the most wretched of circumstances.