While Shepard states that his story is not politically motivated, he did intend it to be a rebuttal to Barbara Ehrenreich's books Nickel and Dimed and Bait and Switch on a socio-economic level.

For example, in a February 16, 2008, interview from NPR, Shepard admits, "you know, I was sitting there, and I was not really happy that I had passed out 50 applications, and nobody was getting back to me, and he just went nuts, and he said listen, Adam, you are a homeless dude.

Scratch Beginnings was used in curriculums or suggested reading material in tens of American and international universities, colleges and schools and translated into other languages.

[5] The author Adam Shepard is a graduate of Merrimack College in North Andover, Massachusetts, where he studied with a basketball scholarship.

After working as a bartender in North Carolina, he collected enough money to engage on a one-year world tour in 2011–2012 that took him to seventeen countries on four continents.