Under the Overpass

Title: UNDER THE OVERPASS
Author: Mike Yankoski
Publisher: Multnomah
2005 / 2010
ISBN: 978-2-59052-402-2
Genre: Inspirational/memoir/Christian living

Mike Yankoski was your ordinary upper middle class kid. A college student, never wanted for anything, and happy with his life. Until God started speaking to him about the homeless. By his own choice, Mike started researching homelessness, talked to his parents about experiencing it, put a support system in place, and came up with a game plan.

Mike and his friend, Sam, decided to experience life on the streets in six different cities: Denver, Washington, D.C., Portland, San Francisco, Phoenix, and San Diego. They started in Denver, in a transition site, a drug rehabilitation program, though neither Sam nor Mike was users. Only the man running the place knew the truth about Sam and Mike. Carrying only a backpack, a sleeping bag, and a guitar, Mike and Sam were determined to live like a true homeless person.

They wanted to find out if their faith was real, if they could actually be the Christians they said they were apart from the comforts they’d always known, and to discover what it means to be homeless in America.

UNDER THE OVERPASS is a captivating true story, but also gritty and challenging. Mike does include a disclaimer, stating that the language in the book was cleaned up significantly for our reading pleasure (thank you, Mike.) This book was on my son’s wish list for a while, so when I was offered the change to review the book I jumped at it. My son is interested in this type of stuff, and while I’ll be honest and say that I don’t want him to follow in Mike’s footsteps, I’ll also say that this experience definitely changed Mike’s and Sam’s lives—and their experience through the pages of this book will change yours. An interview with Mike Yankowski is included at the end of the book. $14.99. 240 pages.

We’ve created a special Under the Overpass action plan for Christmas. You can access the action plan here:
http://multnomahemails.com/wbmlt/pdf/ChristmasUnderTheOverpass_ActionPlan.pdf

read the first chapter of the book here: http://waterbrookmultnomah.com/2010/09/14/sneak-peek-under-the-overpass-5th-anniversary-edition/