Nearly eleven million young adults live in poverty in America. Derailed, the new book from award-winning author Jodie Adams Kirshner, exposes a hidden cause of their predicament: not a lack of ambition or effort, but the small-dollar barriers America’s tattered safety net was never built to catch. For millions of young people struggling to do the right thing, a single, unexpected expense—a textbook, a car repair, a medical bill—can knock a promising life off course.

Over four years and across four states, Kirshner follows six remarkable young people on the cusp of adulthood—an aspiring engineer in Memphis selling his plasma to buy schoolbooks, a Nashville honors student facing sudden homelessness, a coal miner’s son in West Virginia stranded without broadband, a Chicago teenager whose veterinary dreams collide with a family business starved for cash. Their stories weave hope and heartbreak into an unforgettable portrait of hard work, resiliency, and dreams that hinge on small but precious sums.

At a moment when economic mobility has stalled and the American Dream feels out of reach, Derailed points the way to innovative policy solutions—often dubbed “microfunding” —which could fill urgent needs without a radical overall of public policy. With a novelist’s eye and a reporter’s instincts, Kirshner reveals how little it takes to derail a future—and how little it would take to put millions of Americans’ lives back on track.