An Invisible Thread

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

Laura Schroff, Alex Tresniowski

• Publisher: Howard Books
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9781982189648
• eBook ISBN: 9781451642926
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Science Biographies
• Index: Social Sciences

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).

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Foreword, Ten Years Later
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Spare Change
• Chapter 2: The First Day
• Chapter 3: One Good Break
• Chapter 4: The Birthday Present
• Chapter 5: The Baseball Glove
• Chapter 6: Is That It?
• Chapter 7: A Mother’s Song
• Chapter 8: A Father’s Legacy
• Chapter 9: The Brown Paper Bag
• Chapter 10: The Big Table
• Chapter 11: The Missed Appointment
• Chapter 12: Outside Looking In
• Chapter 13: Bittersweet Miracle
• Chapter 14: A Simple Recipe
• Chapter 15: The New Bicycle
• Chapter 16: The Winter Coat
• Chapter 17: The Dark Forest
• Chapter 18: One Last Test
• Chapter 19: The Greatest Gift
• Epilogue: Love, Maurice
• Photographs
• Afterword, Ten Years Later
• Acknowledgments, Ten Years Later
• Reading Group Guide
• About the Authors
• Copyright