My Monks of Vagabondia

In 1908, a husband-and-wife team converted a New Jersey mansion into something radical: a place where men who had fallen through the cracks of early American society could rebuild their lives. Before welfare programs, before rehabilitation, Andress and Lillian Floyd opened their doors to the forgotten. Over three decades, more than 100,000 men passed through the Self-Mastery Colony, each one carrying a story of loss, desperation, or quiet catastrophe. My Monks of Vagabondia collects thirteen of these true tales, rendering portraits of men whose circumstances could have been any of us: the veteran left without a pension, the dreamer who lost everything to bad luck, the worker whose body simply gave out. Floyd writes with extraordinary compassion and frankness, neither sentimentalizing his guests nor turning away from their flaws. These are not stories of dramatic rescues but of small, stubborn human dignity being restored one man at a time. A meditation on what we owe each other, and a time capsule of a America that almost no one remembers.