Monarchs and Mendicants

IN THE MIDST OF A WAR BETWEENTHE RICH AND THE POOR, THE STRONG AND THE WEAK, THE KINGS AND THE PAWNS, ONE MAN FIGHTS HIS WAYFROM DESPAIR TO HOPE.When a fourth homeless man is murdered by the Hacker, Gifford Ulrich leaves downtown St. Louis carrying his belongings on his back and wanders into the Benoit Neighborhood searching for shelter and safety. He finds abandoned buildings and abandoned people; beggars, drunks, drug addicts, gamblers; the outcasts; the unusual, the unbalanced, and the unlucky. His job cleaning bricks leads him to discover hidden forces at work in Benoit that throw him in the middle of danger and death. To fight his way off the streets, Giff must rely on his military training, his knife, and an anger born of loss. The only way to survive the passage from tragedy to triumph is to kill or be killed. BOOK 1 IN THE GIFFORD ULRICH SERIES THE JOURNEY BEGINS: Gifford Ulrich didn't know the distance from despair to hope, but he knew hope didn't sleep in alleys. On this morning his first waking moments were filled with the audible lamenting breath of having survived another winter night on the streets of St. Louis, those onerous recurring sighs that had become his respiration. Endurance was not an uplifting miracle to him, but a depressing fact. Not the surprise, "Hallelujah, I'm alive," but the admission, "Oh, I'm still here."