This book stopped me in my, ahem, tracks, and I was obsessed with the idea of excerpting it in Adventure Journal (we did—thanks, Carrot!). Quinn grew up in Anchorage with a mother deep in untreated schizophrenia — no heat, no food, dumpsters — and a father gone. She got out to Colorado, then spent years riding freight trains around the country with a stolen crew change guide, sleeping in ditches and jungles, and eventually walked thousands of miles of long trails. The book alternates the childhood with the riding, and she writes both without asking for sympathy. The freight material is the real thing: How you catch out, where you hide, what a rail yard sounds like at four in the morning.
The Sunset Route