Bobby Burns, a Tucsonan, an army veteran and a college graduate, writes about his struggle with homelessness in “Shelter,” a critically acclaimed memoir, and he will be celebrating his second printing with a book signing at Bookmans Grant on Wednesday, February 3, from 5:30 to 7:00 p.m.

Burns arrived in Tucson, Arizona, with a few dollars in his pocket and no place to live. Without family, without a job, he had nowhere to go but a homeless shelter. Burns tells the story of how he slipped into homelessness, how he learned what it means to live in a place where nobody will notice if you disappear, and how he emerged to tell his story. The diary of 41 days without a home brings readers into the world of a homeless shelter. The shelter is filled with the sights and sounds of homelessness. Shelter life is patterned by meals provided by church volunteers, lines for soap and clean towels, the repeated meticulous washing of hands by an obsessive-compulsive resident, the rare pleasure of a fried chicken dinner, the illicit smell of marijuana within the shelter.

Burns witnesses the residents' struggles with drugs, alcohol, and disability, and he wonders daily whether he will have the courage to emerge from this life. His diary expresses the full range of emotions of a homeless person: anger, self-pity, pride, humility, shame, depression, and optimism. These are not contradictions; taken together they represent the real feelings provoked by homelessness. But with rare inner courage, he stokes the fires of hope within himself, marking the days in his journal to keep himself from sliding deeper into a spiral of despair. Burns confronts his own stereotypes about the homeless and learns firsthand what it means to struggle daily for survival and for dignity. He learns greater courage and he learns greater kindness. He is given food and a bed for 41 days, but he finds shelter on his own, deep within himself.

Burns lives in Tucson, Arizona, where he works as Assistant Director for an alcohol recovery program and teaches high school part-time. He serves on the Board of Directors of the Primavera Foundation, a non-profit advocacy group for the homeless, and is the editor of The Sojourner, a bimonthly newsletter for the Tucson NAACP. His writings on homelessness have been published in the Arizona Daily Star, the Arizona Republic, and the Tucson Citizen.