Laurie Mercier talks with Desiree Hellegers. Desiree spent time working in women's homeless shelters in the 1980s and she describes listening to them tell their stories. She says of her new book about homeless women, based in part on that experience, that "she wanted to explore oral history in this book as a vehicle for trying to convey some of that complex life experience and that sort of really, kind of you know, range of insights - from political insights, to philosophical and theological perspectives that women brought to bear on their own lives and also on civil society and the US more broadly."