The Unclaimed: Abandonment and Hope in the City of Angels

by Pamela Prickett, Stefan Timmermans Narrated by Nan McNamara

Overview

“A rare and compassionate look into the lives of Americans who go unclaimed when they die and those who dedicate their lives to burying them with dignity.”-Matthew Desmond, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Poverty, by America

“A work of grace . . . Both cleareyed and disturbing, yet pulsing with empathy.”-The New York Times (Editors' Choice)

For centuries, people who died destitute or alone were buried in potters' fields-a Dickensian end that even the most hard-pressed families tried to avoid. Today, more and more relatives are abandoning their dead, leaving it to local governments to dispose of the bodies. Up to 150,000 Americans now go unclaimed each year. Who are they? Why are they being forgotten? And what is the meaning of life if your death doesn't matter to others?

In this extraordinary work of narrative nonfiction, eight years in the making, sociologists Pamela Prickett and Stefan Timmermans uncover a hidden social world. They follow four individuals in Los Angeles, tracing the twisting, poignant paths that put each at risk of going unclaimed, and introducing us to the scene investigators, notification officers, and crematorium workers who care for them when no one else will.

The Unclaimed lays bare the difficult truth that anyone can be abandoned. It forces us to confront a variety of social ills, from the fracturing of families and the loneliness of cities to the toll of rising inequality. But it is also filled with unexpected moments of tenderness. In Boyle Heights, a Mexican American neighborhood not far from the glitter of Hollywood, hundreds of strangers come together each year to mourn the deaths of people they never knew. These ceremonies, springing up across the country, reaffirm our shared humanity and help mend our frayed social fabric.

Beautifully crafted and profoundly empathetic, The Unclaimed urges us to expand our circle of caring-in death and in life.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

01/29/2024

Sociologists Pickett (Believing in South Central) and Timmermans (Postmortem) offer a compassionate if somewhat shortsighted account of Los Angeles County’s “unclaimed dead.” Investigating the bureaucratic process triggered by death, the authors argue that it is mainly “deep estrangement” from family that leads to remains going unclaimed. Among other such cases, they profile David Spencer, a U.S. Navy veteran who died in 2017. His most closely related family, with whom he had not been in contact for nearly two decades, were told they had to pay out of pocket to transfer David’s body to a funeral home (the legal threshold of “claiming”) before they could process his estate or petition for a free military burial. They declined, and David was buried by the county, his funeral paid for from his savings. His relatives didn’t attend the service but inherited the rest of his estate, which a county bureaucrat interprets as a sign of their callous indifference, discounting their claims of poverty and disability. The authors unsatisfyingly conclude in tacit agreement with this perspective, advising readers to keep in touch with family to avoid an “unclaimed” fate (“We hope that you are not estranged from loved ones.... Make sure your loved ones know you care”), rather than highlighting needed reforms of a dysfunctional government process. It’s a moving slice of life with a dispiriting takeaway. (Mar.)

From the Publisher

A work of grace . . . Both cleareyed and disturbing, yet pulsing with empathy.”—The New York Times Book Review

“A deeply compelling, utterly original account of all those whose bodies lie unclaimed in a Los Angeles morgue . . . These intimate profiles read like short stories, the writing both deeply empathic and unflinchingly honest. . . . [The Unclaimed] is a book that speaks to the power of narrative. Hearing stories makes us feel less alone. Hearing stories pushes us to ask hard questions of ourselves. This book has landed at just the right moment. . . . I didn’t expect to come away feeling so sanguine about humanity.”—The Atlantic

“The Unclaimed . . . poignantly illustrates the forces that leave so many vulnerable to homelessness and addiction as well as to social isolation, excavating the growing population of those who are left to die without a community.”—The New Republic

“Here’s hoping you can read one-handed. Left or right, you’ll need the other hand to place over your mouth when you’re touched by the beauty and humanity inside The Unclaimed.”—Wyoming Tribune Eagle

“What The Unclaimed lays bare about our families, our loneliness, our poverty—and our decency and courage, as well—demands that we reexamine our own lives while we still have breath.”—Matthew Desmond, author of Poverty, by America

“Powerful. Haunting. This book is living witness to the millions of forgotten dead, reminding us that we reaffirm our own humanity each time we tell the stories of those already gone.”—Kate Bowler, author of Everything Happens for a Reason

“The Unclaimed is a stunning work of narrative journalism that takes on the difficult, even taboo subject of society’s unclaimed dead. . . . Pamela Prickett and Stefan Timmermans . . . explain how our flawed systems threaten to withhold this final dignity for society’s most vulnerable.”—Roxanna Asgarian, author of We Were Once a Family

“With exceptional humanity, The Unclaimed follows the dead who have fallen through the cracks of Los Angeles’ stifling postmortem bureaucracy. A bracing and impressive read.”—Caitlin Doughty, author of Smoke Gets in Your Eyes

“The Unclaimed reveals just how easy it is for even relatively stable Americans to slide into lives of ghastly isolation, and to die alone. The stories it tells are troubling and compelling, and its exploration of the hidden corners of this reality is unique and important.”—Jill Leovy, author of Ghettoside

“A gripping and compassionate account that leaves us with a feeling of social and personal responsibility for our kin, our community, and ourselves.”—BookPage, starred review

“Poignant . . . An unsettling study of how social fracturing and community breakdown underpin lonely deaths . . . researched and written with appropriate sensitivity, care, and dignity.”—Kirkus Reviews

Library Journal

03/29/2024

In the U.S., roughly 150,000 dead bodies go unclaimed each year, and that number is rising. Sociologists Prickett (Univ. of Amsterdam; Believing in South Central) and Timmermans (UCLA; coauthor, Data Analysis in Qualitative Research) explore the question of a life's value when the deceased remain unidentified, sometimes abandoned, and left for local governments to dispose of. The authors use four people as case studies to investigate how this can happen. They conclude that when a body is found, sometimes no one ever sorts through public records to determine who the person is. There's also little to no evidence of attempts to find people who might be able to identify them. The authors believe that the fracturing of families, the lack of connection, unresolved solutions to reducing the significant number of unhoused people nationwide, and many other social ills contribute to this situation. Noteworthy is their mention of how hundreds of people show their care for humanity for others by gathering once a year in Boyle Heights, CA, to mourn and bury unidentified people in the area. VERDICT This title urges readers to care (in life and in death) about the disturbing number of Americans who go unclaimed each year.—Claude Ury

Kirkus Reviews

2023-11-17
An unsettling study of how social fracturing and community breakdown underpin lonely deaths.

America’s epidemic of loneliness has engendered another troubling crisis: a sharp rise in the number of unclaimed decedents. Without a family member stepping up, it falls to local governments to provide a burial or cremation, with the remains usually being interred in common, anonymous graves. Lost souls, nameless bodies, forgotten lives: This is a dispiriting but important story, and sociologists Prickett and Timmermans approach it with both compassion and gravitas. In the U.S. each year, tens of thousands of decedents go unclaimed, but the authors focus their research on four cases in Los Angeles. The reasons for lonely deaths vary widely, although substance abuse, mental illness, and homelessness often play a large part. Many decedents had grown apart from their family and friends, sometimes due to a conflict long past. Others didn’t have much of a support system to begin with, and as they aged, their social circle contracted and eventually disappeared. Prickett and Timmermans look at funeral costs as an element that might discourage family members from claiming a relative’s body and conclude that this is seldom a driving issue, compared to simply not caring. Much of this material is unbearably sad, but the authors do identify some threads of hope, for example the growing trend of neighborhood communities and church groups holding regular funeral services for unclaimed decedents. “Holding hands with strangers around the gravesite of the unclaimed as surrogate family members,” they write, “is an act of forgiveness and hope….Even if it may seem there are other social problems more pressing and worthy of our limited time, the unclaimed remind us that unless every body counts, nobody counts.”

A poignant and disturbing book, researched and written with appropriate sensitivity, care, and dignity.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940159598189
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	03/12/2024
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

1.

New Directions

Bobby Ray Hanna paced backstage. He was fifty-­one years old but looked younger, his brown skin smooth and unlined. His hair and mustache were freshly trimmed, accentuating the roundness in his cheeks. As he tried to walk off his nerves, Bobby made sure not to wrinkle his collarless black button-­down and matching slacks. His ex-­wife, Clara Hanna, teased that he was worse than a girl when it came to his obsession with clothes. And shoes: If Bobby had money in his pocket, he couldn’t resist buying a pair. He had taken care to have his dress shoes mirror shined for that night’s special performance. It was June 2010, and the once homeless air force veteran was about to sing live on national television, for the NBC show America’s Got Talent. He was there with the New Directions Veterans Choir, comprised of veterans who had either gone through the full-­service treatment center or, like Bobby, were currently there.

Bobby had been dreaming of catching a musical break since he was a little boy sitting next to Michael Jackson in elementary school back in Gary, Indiana. The two boys, born only seven months apart, competed for solos in school recitals. Michael won every time. Bobby knew he was nowhere near the level of talent as of the future King of Pop, but he was convinced he could have made a successful career in music if his life had taken a few different turns. Now he would sing in front of millions of viewers, hoping for a shot at $1 million with his group.

It was Bobby’s tenacity that had gotten him into the choir. He hadn’t been in the New Directions treatment program long when he heard that the group would compete on television. He had little time to master the song the choir would sing on the show, “Ol’ Man River,” from the 1927 musical Show Boat. Bobby would be a tenor if he made the cut, but the choir’s founder, George Hill, didn’t think Bobby could learn the complicated song in time. Bobby wasn’t a trained singer, and his self-­taught guitar skills were useless in an a cappella group.

He would not let go. This was the closest he had been to becoming a professional musician since his days in the air force in the 1980s, when he worked a side gig deejaying on river cruises in London.

George understood Bobby’s need to sing. There were days in his twelve years living on the streets that George didn’t care if he lived or died, but then he would start singing. He would belt out tunes for hours in the tunnels of MacArthur Park near downtown Los Angeles, until he felt better. George told Bobby that if he aced the song, he could join the reality competition. Sure enough, Bobby learned the lyrics and harmonies, earning his spot as a member of the ten-­person, nearly all-­Black group.

Bobby snuck off from the group backstage to make a call to Clara. The British-­Indian expat was sitting in her West Los Angeles apartment, the same one that the former couple had shared in the last years of their marriage. They had met when Bobby was stationed in England, near a McDonald’s where then eighteen-­year-­old Clara worked. Bobby came in nearly every day for lunch, dressed in his uniform, trying to impress her. She knew her Catholic parents would not approve of her dating an airman, who they thought would break her heart. Two years passed before she said yes to a date. Soon after, the young Englishwoman found herself cruising the Thames, partying alongside her American boyfriend.

The adventure ended when Bobby was discharged and returned home to Gary, Indiana. They kept in touch by phone and, in 1990, Bobby convinced Clara to meet him in Redlands, California, east of Los Angeles, for a fresh start. Clara didn’t love Redlands—it was more for families with young children than a thrill-­seeking couple—but she was happy to be with Bobby. They married, and at first things were stable. But as the years passed Clara realized that Bobby’s carefree and confident London attitude had been dampened by the years in Gary. He started staying out late, spending entire nights away from Clara. The couple split and reunited several times. Then came Bobby’s involvement with drugs and run-­ins with law enforcement. He was arrested for fighting and spent fifteen days in jail. A felony charge for possession of a controlled substance with intent to sell soon followed. Bobby was sentenced to two years in a state prison. For years, Clara had told herself, “It’s going to get better.” But seeing Bobby on the inside, she knew she was done. She had divorce papers served to Bobby. He called her from a prison pay phone, angry and desperate. He wasn’t Catholic, but he knew how important Clara’s faith was to her. Bobby taunted her, “Catholics aren’t supposed to divorce.”

“No,” Clara replied, “but on the other hand, nowhere in the Bible does God say I have to be unhappy.”

Following his release, Bobby flitted from party to party, until one by one his friends kicked him out. In 2009, seven years after the divorce, he was down to a single duffel bag and nothing else. He camped out on Sepulveda Boulevard, near the I-­10 and 405, at one of the busiest interchanges in the country. After two restless nights, he called Clara and asked if she would pick him up.

Clara struggled to enforce boundaries with Bobby. He was her first love. She drove to the freeway underpass, and Bobby climbed in. She handed him a Tupperware box with leftover rice and beef. As he wolfed down the food, Clara said she would take him to a motel two miles south, where she paid for one night and left Bobby to think about what he should do next. The walls were thin enough to hear when someone turned on an air conditioner in the next room. But the louder noise was the voice of self-­doubt inside Bobby’s head. He knew about a rehab facility for veterans, and he also knew the program required therapy. Bobby did not like to talk about himself. It was one of the reasons his marriage had failed.

When Clara returned the next day and pressed for a plan, Bobby hesitated. He mentioned New Directions, explaining it was run by a nonprofit and located on the grounds of the VA. Clara wanted Bobby to check in right away. They went back and forth, until Clara announced, “We’re going. I’m dropping you off because you need help.” This was Clara’s moment of tough love. She drove Bobby to the facility, in West L.A., and wished him luck. Then she drove back to her apartment.

When he called from the backstage of America’s Got Talent the following year, Bobby tried to convince her to come down to the live taping. Clara thought about how long the line to get into the theater would be and how hot it was outside. She said, “I know you’re disappointed, but I can’t.” She promised to watch the performance on TV.

“Oh, it’s all right.”

Bobby had given her the line he always did when he felt hurt. He had a habit of downplaying his pain to save face. It was part of the reason he’d started to use drugs, to escape. He did everything he could to distance himself from failure.

For the month of June 2010, the America’s Got Talent reality show set up in the Orpheum Theatre, a historic playhouse in downtown Los Angeles with an iconic Beaux Arts façade that opened in 1926. After vaudeville had faded away, the theater became host to top musical acts, featuring Black American performers like Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington, and Aretha Franklin. Now, like many venues in Los Angeles, the playhouse had to tap into the city’s growing reality show industry to stay relevant. On the night Bobby performed, the theater’s nearly two thousand seats were full. Fast-­moving cameras panned between the screaming fans and stage. The New Directions Veterans Choir was one of twenty-­seven acts competing that evening to go to the next round in Las Vegas.

Comedian and television presenter Nick Cannon met the group backstage and, with an infectious smile, pumped up the ten members before they went onstage for a live audience. “This is the moment,” he said. 

“This is the moment,” George Hill returned with a radiant smile, his voice calm.

“You guys ready?”

The eight men and two women answered in unison, “We ready.” Bobby bounced in anticipation, his face stoic but his body jittery.

Before every performance, one of the members would pray them in, and tonight it had been Bobby’s turn. He asked God to bless the performance and to let their voices be as one.

The choir would need to answer the questions of the celebrity judges before their act. Piers Morgan, a grumpy Brit, took the lead. “Who’re you guys?”

In the polished style that George had practiced at performances and fundraisers, the former marine said firmly, “We are New Directions Choir. We are comprised of formerly homeless sailors, soldiers, airmen, and marines.”

“And you said you were all homeless?” Morgan asked.

“We were all homeless.” George was usually a jokester onstage, but tonight he was all business. “In my particular case I was homeless for twelve years, living in MacArthur Park and Skid Row.”

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