As in a Mirror

John Stuart King has money, fame, and every comfort money can buy. He's also a writer preparing a novel about a homeless man, and he's done his research: interviews, observations, thorough notes. But when a sermon challenges his congregation to see the poor as Christ himself, King confronts an uncomfortable question: can you truly understand someone's life from the outside? His answer is radical. He abandons his comfortable existence to live as a tramp, sleeping in shelters and on streets, discovering hunger and humiliation firsthand. What begins as research for a book becomes something far more transformative: a journey into poverty that reveals the hollowness of his assumptions and the depth of his own spiritual blindness. The tramp he intended to write about becomes his teacher, and the lessons about truth, integrity, and compassionate faith are earned in the hardest possible way. The novel remains a striking exploration of empathy's limits and its surprising power to remake a human soul.