Breaking Night is Liz Murray's 2010 memoir that chronicles her homelessness. After being born to loving but drug-addicted parents in the Bronx, New York, Liz struggled fitting in at school. She got made fun of for her dirty clothes and lice-infested hair by classmates. As a result, she was sent to a girl's home. Eventually, though, at 15, she was forced out onto the streets, having to scavenge for food and using the subway to sleep in a warm place. Having had enough of being homeless, she went back to high school and fastidiously made her way through the four year curriculum in two years. Along the way, she won an incredible scholarship and made it into Harvard, transcending her homelessness and making a good life for herself and later, for her family.
Upon release, Breaking Night was met with stellar reviews. On Amazon, it holds an incredible rating of 4.7 out of 5 stars. On book review aggregator site, it holds a similarly spectacular review of 4.21 out of 5 stars. Speaking positively of the novel, The New York Times writes that “'Breaking Night' itself is full of heart, without a sliver of ice, and deeply moving." Many other outlets giving similarly glowing reviews to it and compared it to Jeannette Walls' novel The Glass Castle, which deals with similar subject matter.
