In Mayor of the Tenderloin, journalist Alison Owings slips behind the cold statistics and sensationalism surrounding San Francisco’s Tenderloin to reveal a harrowing and life-affirming account of Del Seymour—whose addiction led him into 18 years of homelessness, pimping, and drug dealing. Once sober, he started Tenderloin Walking Tours and later Code Tenderloin, the remarkable organization teaching homeless, recovering addicts, sex workers, dealers, ex-felons, and other marginalized people how to get and keep a job.

Honest and compelling, Mayor of the Tenderloin follows homelessness in one of America’s toughest neighborhoods as it was lived—in the words of someone who lived it and is now fighting to solve it.