Monarchs and Mendicants


Fiction - Mystery - General
282 Pages
Reviewed on 10/21/2015
Buy on Amazon

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    Book Review

Reviewed by Raanan Geberer for Readers' Favorite

In Monarchs and Mendicants, Dan Groat tells the story of Gifford, a homeless Afghanistan veteran who moves into an informal colony of other homeless men in a rundown industrial area of St. Louis. He trusts no one and wants no friends except for his dog. The men clean bricks at a nearby salvage operation for five cents a brick, and Gifford soon follows suit. But Gifford then has a run-in with Kong, an enforcer for the salvage operation who thinks he runs the neighborhood. Kong insults, harasses and sometimes assaults the homeless men at will. When Gifford and some of the other men ask for ten cents a brick, Kong destroys their makeshift shelters in retaliation. Soon Gifford knows what he must do.

There have not been many novels about homeless men, and Monarchs and Mendicants is surely one of the better ones. Groat does a great job with character development – we see how Gifford slowly comes out of his shell, becoming friendly with the other men and revealing details about his experiences in Afghanistan. Contrary to stereotype, most of the men are not alcoholics or drug addicts, and one even speaks in Shakespearean English. The description of the neighborhood, Benoit, is also very good — I’ve known similar places in New York City. As for the salvage operation, if you guessed that they aren’t entirely “on the level,” you’d be right, although we don’t find out what they’re doing until the end. Above all, Groat manages to write about a down-and-out lifestyle without leaving the reader feeling depressed at all.