Without a Home

Edward Payson Roe was an American author, horticulturalist, and clergyman.

Published in 1881, “Without a Home” is the story of the trials and tragedies that follow a 19th century New York City family affected by the father's opium addiction.  In accordance with Harper's Magazine, “Without a Home” is the ultimate design of the story is to trace the origin and growth, and exhibit the pernicious results of the morphia habit. Mr. Roe has graphically, and at times powerfully and dramatically, portrayed its influence to wither and destroy manhood and to wreck the happiness of the family. The harrowing incidents which are the consequence of the evil are not so ostentatiously exhibited as to be revolting, but are ingeniously distributed over a story that has a substantial and independent interest of its own.