Maid explores the life of a single mother trying to better herself. It walks through all of the convoluted steps to get any kind of assistance for housing and child care and food, and how the deck is stacked against you. Yes, the system is a mess, but the story only gives a couple concrete examples, then spends the majority of the book talking about going from house to house to house to house to house… and cleaning toilets, pubic hairs, and black mold in each one. The book could have been about half as long to make these points.

There is so much more that she could have talked about without being so repetitive. Fortunately, she received a number of breaks that enabled her to finish a degree and become a writer., but that all happens in about a dozen pages (I went on a trip, liked the town, moved and graduated). She did warn that time was compressed in the story, just maybe not in the right places.