Living at the Edge of the World: A Teenager's Survival in the Tunnels of Grand Central Station
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A searing, true story right out of 1980s New York City: During the height of the crack cocaine epidemic, with AIDS and homelessness raging out of control, a young woman survives four years living in the tunnels of Grand Central Station.
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Sixteen year old Tina S. leaves behind her dysfunctional family to join her new friend, April, a wild and charismatic teenage runaway, living in the station's deepest tunnels amidst the homeless and drug addicted. Soon she's caught up in in a romantic relationship with April and finds herself following in her footsteps: bingeing on crack cocaine, stealing, rolling drunks, and panhandling to support their habits and to survive on the New York City streets.
In her own words Tina describes her harrowing descent into crack addiction, being raped in the tunnels, several arrests and jail terms served with hardened criminals on Rikers Island, and her devastation over April's sudden, brutal death.
Finally faced with the reality that she might not make it through one more day, Tina takes her first tentative steps towards a normal life.
With the help of a homeless advocate and his wife, a gay uncle dying of AIDS, and Jamie Pastor Bolnick, the writer who was to become her coauthor on this book, Tina turns her life around and begins the long struggle back to the world of the living.
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