In the months before he died in August 2023, Nashvillian Charles Strobel, founder of a national model of care for the unhoused called Room In The Inn, decided to commit to paper the stories he’d told his whole life of the people who had guided him in the ways of unconditional love. Many of them were destitute. All of them were poor in body, spirit or both.

These simple tales, compiled in his posthumous memoir “The Kingdom of the Poor: My Journey Home,” tell of the father who died when Charles was 4, of the mother and aunts who raised him on selflessness, of the family friend who ignited his passion for baseball, of founding Room In The Inn with a peanut butter sandwich, of losing his mother to murder, of forgiving her killer – and so much more.  

By turns funny, tender, heartbreaking, and profound, Strobel’s stories wield the power to convince the reader of the truth that shaped his life and work: that everyone has the capacity for good. “We are all poor and we are all worthy of love,” Father Strobel once said.

Advance praise for “The Kingdom of the Poor: My Journey Home” has come in from across the literary and social justice spheres.

“He has left us an enduring testament to the power of good works—and a reminder that all of us have the capacity to bend the arc of the moral universe a bit closer to justice,” said Jon Meacham, Pulitzer Prize–winning historian and author of “The Soul of America.”

“In ‘The Kingdom of the Poor,’ Charlie Strobel reminds us again and again what true light looks like in even the most unbearable darkness,” added Margaret Renkl, author of “The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year and Late Migrations.” “It looks like communion. It looks like mercy. It looks like love.”

Still others have had these things to say.

“This tender book invites us all to a larger love and a flourishing joy. It will leave you with the breathless longing to stand at the margins so that they get erased,” Father Greg Boyle, author of “Tattoos on the Heart” and founder of Homeboy Industries. “Charlie Strobel was the shape of God's heart."

“Funny. Tender. Bursting with compassion and insight. But I’d be careful if I were you,” added Kate Bowler, author of “Have a Beautiful Terrible Day!” and “The Lives We Actually Have.” “This little book might change your life.”

Even singer-songwriter and activist Emmylou Harris, and Matthew Desmond, Pulitzer-prize winning sociologist and author of “Poverty, by America,” endorsed the book.

“If we’re lucky, we’ll meet someone who truly opens our eyes to the suffering of others, and so our hearts to the healing power of forgiveness, compassion, and simple kindness,” Harris said. “Our Charlie, full of Grace.”

“Seeing Christ in all of us, Charles Strobel has given us one final blessing: beatitudes for our time and a blueprint for joy and wholeness,” Desmond added.

“The Kingdom of the Poor,” published by Vanderbilt University Press in 2024, is edited by Katie Seigenthaler, Strobel’s niece; and Amy Frogge, his Room In The Inn colleague. It includes a foreword by internationally renowned author Ann Patchett, who wrote about Strobel and his way in the world in “The Worthless Servant,” which is included in her essay collection “These Precious Days.”  

“The Kingdom of the Poor” is available for pre-order through its independent bookseller partner Parnassus, as well as independent and online booksellers nationwide. It will be released Sept. 17 and featured at the 36th annual Southern Festival of Books Oct. 26-27.

All royalties from the sale of “The Kingdom of the Poor” will go to Room In The Inn.