Publisher's Synopsis
'Don't drink! Bars are no place for a child. He needs to have a bath and his clothes and underwear need to be washed. School is important. If there's a problem, just bring him back. Okay?' Despite his mother's stern warnings, 11-year-old Michael and his dad ditch Albany and start hitchhiking out West. Michael spends the rest of his childhood criss-crossing America with his alcoholic father, rarely attending class, surviving on shoplifted sardines and sugared bread, sleeping in rundown rooming houses and rousing his soused dad from seedy bars; always moving on to the next two-bit town. There is love between father and son and a shared passion for the open road, but this lonely, marginal existence is no place for a young boy. Told in the world-wise voice of the boy he once was, Michael Keith's memoir is unsentimental and funny. It explores the fine line between wanderlust and compulsion, between running away and arriving, and demonstrates that the longing for the 'next better place' is often more powerful than the arrival.
