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Boarding the Westbound

$16.95

Journey of a Depression-era Hobo
By Joseph Szalanski

It's a journey that began in Poland, ended in a Western Pennsylvania steel mill, and wandered to all 48 states of 1932 America. 

"This unique book is both a history and a testament.  As a history it covers the era of the Depression and the unfolding effect of the early twentieth century immigrants on American society, the labor movement and the generation that followed. Joseph Szalanski is a spokesman for that generation. The testament is a hobo-diary painstakingly written day by day by his father - a man who lived the Depresssion and lived through it. Together the history and the testament (plus a select gathering of photographs) give us a portrait of an era that is as central to American life as it is incomparable and unforgettable."
-Samuel Hazo, Director of the International Poetry Forum