A Material Witness

More about the book

The core of this book is a faithful transcription of the author's reading aloud the actual journals she kept when she was on the road at thirteen, fourteen, and fifteen years of age. This core is bracketed by a handful of memories before she went on the road and after. Together, the diaries and the memories tell the story of a young girl's growing up on the road. Britomar and her parents walked, occasionally hitchhiking or catching freight trains, as they wandered the hills and valleys, most of the time in Southern California. They slept in boxcars, abandoned houses, under culverts and bridges, and subsisted on "handouts" from those who still lived in houses during that terrible time in our nation's history, known today as The Great Depression.