An Invisible Thread: The True Story of an 11-Year-Old Panhandler, a Busy Sales Executive, and an Unlikely Meeting with Destiny

by Laura Schroff, Alex Tresniowski Narrated by Pam Ward

Overview

This 10th anniversary edition of the beloved #1 New York Times bestseller includes a new introduction and afterword by the author. Chronicling the lifelong friendship between a busy sales executive and a disadvantaged young boy that began with one small gesture of kindness, this is a “ray of hope for a better future, as well as an assurance that love is a stronger force than injustice and inequality” (Sybrina Fulton, mother of Travyon Martin and coauthor of Rest in Power: The Enduring Life of Trayvon Martin).

Stopping was never part of the plan...

She was a successful ad sales rep in Manhattan. He was a homeless, eleven-year-old panhandler on the street. He asked for spare change; she kept walking. But then something stopped her in her tracks, and she went back. And she continued to go back, again and again. They met up nearly every week for years and built an unexpected, life-changing friendship that has today spanned almost three decades.

Whatever made me notice him on that street corner so many years ago is clearly something that cannot be extinguished, no matter how relentless the forces aligned against it. Some may call it spirit. Some may call it heart. It drew me to him, as if we were bound by some invisible, unbreakable thread. And whatever it is, it binds us still.¿

Now with new material that brings the life-changing story up to date for its tenth anniversary, An Invisible Thread is “a book capable of restoring our faith in each other and in the very idea that maybe everything is going to be okay after all” (Catherine Ryan Hyde, author of Pay It Forward).

Editorial Reviews

Clayton Morris

An incredible story . . . I would encourage everyone to pick up this book.

Publishers Weekly

"According to an old Chinese proverb, there's an invisible thread that connects two people who are destined to meet and influence each other's lives. . . . As Schroff relates Maurice's story, she tells of her own father's alcoholism and abuse, and readers see how desperately these two need each other in this feel-good story about the far-reaching benefits of kindness."

Huffington Post - Jesse Kornbluth

"If you have a beating heart—or if you fear you’re suffering a hardening of the emotional arteries—you really ought to commit to this book at the earliest possible opportunity . . . read this book. And pass it on. And encourage the next reader to do the same.

Catherine Ryan Hyde

"I thought I knew what An Invisible Thread was going to be. I thought it would be a simple and hopeful story about a woman who saved a boy. I was wrong. It's a complex and unswervingly honest story about a woman and a boy who saved each other. By its raw honesty and lack of excess sentimentality, it is even more inspirational. This is a book capable of restoring our faith in each other and in the very idea that maybe everything is going to be okay after all."

Kirkus Reviews

"A straightforward tale of kindness and paying it forward in 1980s New York . . . For readers seeking an uplifting reminder that small gestures matter."

Chris Gardner

"An Invisible Thread—a remarkable story, told so beautifully and honestly—shows us what's possible when we are not afraid to connect with another human being and tap into our compassion. It is a story about the power each of us has to elevate someone else's life and how our own life is enriched in the process. This special book reminds us that damaging cycles can be broken and not to neglect the humanity of the strangers we brush up against every day."

Rachael Ray

"An Invisible Thread is like The Blind Side, but instead of football, it’s food. These are two people who were brought together by one simple meal, and it literally changed the course of both of their lives. This is a must-read . . . you can read it in a day because it’s impossible to put down. If you read it and find it as moving as I did, pay it forward: buy a copy and give it to a friend.

“Coach” Ron Tunick

This book is a game-changer . . . each chapter touches your heart. An Invisible Thread is a gift to us all. America needs this book now more than ever.

Dr. Johan Smith

"A single moment of obedience by an ordinary person started a wonderful relationship and a better life for a poor street child. Maurice started to dream, because Laura showed him compassion and kindness. This is exactly what Jesus is asking his followers to do today in a broken world. An Invisible Thread is an example for each and every one of us, not only in South Africa but in every other country. This book can and will change the world."

Coach Ron Tunick

This book is a game-changer . . . each chapter touches your heart. An Invisible Thread is a gift to us all. America needs this book now more than ever.

Mike Huckabee

"This is one of the most touching and refreshing and inspiring stories I have read in a long time. If you had made this story up, I wouldn’t have believed it, but it’s true. We all need something to inspire us, and I promise you, this book will make you want to stand up and do something nice for people. What a wonderful and needed story for all of us. An Invisible Thread is fantastic."

“Coach” Ron Tunick

This book is a game-changer . . . each chapter touches your heart. An Invisible Thread is a gift to us all. America needs this book now more than ever.

From the Publisher

"[A] feel-good story about the far-reaching benefits of kindness." ---Publishers Weekly

"Coach" Ron Tunick

This book is a game-changer . . . each chapter touches your heart. An Invisible Thread is a gift to us all. America needs this book now more than ever.

Johan Smith

"A single moment of obedience by an ordinary person started a wonderful relationship and a better life for a poor street child. Maurice started to dream, because Laura showed him compassion and kindness. This is exactly what Jesus is asking his followers to do today in a broken world. An Invisible Thread is an example for each and every one of us, not only in South Africa but in every other country. This book can and will change the world."

Ron Tunick

This book is a game-changer . . . each chapter touches your heart. An Invisible Thread is a gift to us all. America needs this book now more than ever.

Huffington Post

If you have a beating heart—or if you fear you’re suffering a hardening of the emotional arteries—you really ought to commit to this book at the earliest possible opportunity . . . read this book. And pass it on. And encourage the next reader to do the same.
— Jesse Kornbluth

Kirkus Reviews

A straightforward tale of kindness and paying it forward in 1980s New York.

When advertising executive Schroff answered a child's request for spare change by inviting him for lunch, she did not expect the encounter to grow into a friendship that would endure into his adulthood. The author recounts how she and Maurice, a promising boy from a drug-addicted family, learned to trust each other. Schroff acknowledges risks—including the possibility of her actions being misconstrued and the tension of crossing socio-economic divides—but does not dwell on the complexities of homelessness or the philosophical problems of altruism. She does not question whether public recognition is beneficial, or whether it is sufficient for the recipient to realize the extent of what has been done. With the assistance of People human-interest writer Tresniowski (Tiger Virtues, 2005, etc.), Schroff adheres to a personal narrative that traces her troubled relationship with her father, her meetings with Maurice and his background, all while avoiding direct parallels, noting that their childhoods differed in severity even if they shared similar emotional voids. With feel-good dramatizations, the story seldom transcends the message that reaching out makes a difference. It is framed in simple terms, from attributing the first meeting to "two people with complicated pasts and fragile dreams" that were "somehow meant to be friends" to the conclusion that love is a driving force. Admirably, Schroff notes that she did not seek a role as a "substitute parent," and she does not judge Maurice's mother for her lifestyle. That both main figures experience a few setbacks yet eventually survive is never in question; the story fittingly concludes with an epilogue by Maurice.

For readers seeking an uplifting reminder that small gestures matter.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940173461032
Publisher:	Simon & Schuster
Publication date:	05/28/2019
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

An Invisible Thread

The boy stands alone on a sidewalk in Brooklyn and this is what he sees: a woman running for her life, and another woman chasing her with a hammer. He recognizes one woman as his father’s girlfriend. The other, the one with the hammer, he doesn’t know.

The boy is stuck in something like hell. He is six years old and covered in small red bites from chinches—bedbugs—and he is woefully skinny and malnourished. He is so hungry his stomach hurts, but then being hungry is nothing new to him. When he was two years old the pangs got so bad he rooted through the trash and ate rat droppings and had to have his stomach pumped. He is staying in his father’s cramped, filthy apartment in a desolate stretch of Brooklyn, sleeping with stepbrothers who wet the bed, surviving in a place that smells like death. He has not seen his mother in three months, and he doesn’t know why. His world is a world of drugs and violence and unrelenting chaos, and he has the wisdom to know, even at six, that if something does not change for him soon, he might not make it.

He does not pray, does not know how, but he thinks, Please don’t let my father let me die. And this thought, in a way, is its own little prayer.

And then the boy sees his father come up the block, and the woman with the hammer sees him too, and she screams, “Junebug, where is my son?!”

The boy recognizes this voice, and he says, “Mom?”

The woman with the hammer looks down at the boy, and she looks puzzled, until she looks harder and finally says, “Maurice?”

The boy didn’t recognize his mother because her teeth had fallen out from smoking dope.

The mother didn’t recognize her son because he was so skinny and shriveled.

Now she is chasing Junebug and yelling, “Look what you did to my baby!”

The boy should be frightened, or confused, but more than anything what the boy feels is happiness. He is happy that his mother has come back to get him, and because of that he is not going to die—at least not now, at least not in this place.

He will remember this as the moment when he knew his mother loved him.

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