At age 16 in 1938 Hofvendahl ( Hard on the Wind ) shipped out from his native San Francisco on a merchant vessel headed north. The pay was low and the workload enormous, so he and a Danish fellow sailor jumped ship in Canada and went east, looking for work harvesting grain in the prairie provinces. They were caught by ... Read moreU.S. immigration authorities right after they had crossed the border, and Hofvendahl's companion was sent to New York to be deported. The author made his way to New York where he worked for awhile, then journeyed back to the Bay Area via a southern route. Along the way he learned the rules of the road, traveled with many fine companions, met several willing women and, above all, encountered kindness and generosity from people who had little to give but seemed always ready to share. A heartwarming tale. Photos not seen by PW.
Publishers Weekly
Absorbing sequel to Hofvendahl's Hard on the Wind (1983), which detailed the author's sea-faring adventures at age 15. Here, a 16-year-old Hofvendahl undertakes a rigorous odyssey across 1938 America. After jumping ship in British Columbia with a friendly Danish seaman, Hofvendahl endures a hobo journey of riding the rails, hitchhiking, and walking across Canada and the US to N.Y.C. and south to New Orleans, then through the arid Southwest to California. He survives periodic hunger and thirst, heat and cold, loneliness and risk of sudden death while matching wits with Canadian Mounties, brutal armed railroad "bulls," suspicious townspeople, and a few criminal hobos. Although at times finding temporary work as a farm laborer and as a clothes- presser in N.Y.C., Hofvendahal discovers that when his funds are spent there are always the kindness of strangers and the compassion of women. The Good Samaritan theme recurs throughout as the author in turn helps his fellows in a kind of brotherhood of the road, bonding through sharing at this time when a dollar a day and hot meals were the pay for backbreaking labor. In tight, lean prose, Hofvendahl writes evocatively of courage, hope, and the essential decency of ordinary people: in all, a gritty picture of desperate Depression days when uncounted thousands left home to seek a more hopeful life somewhere beyond the horizon.
Kirkus
Hofvendahl's travels at 16 seem right out of Woody Guthrie. When he jumped ship in 1938, he headed east through Canada, south to New Orleans via New York, and across to San Francisco. He rode the rails often, and here he tells of catching freights on the fly, of panoramas viewed from 'side-door Pullmans' or from open gondolas snaking down California peaks. There were also times without shelter, food, or water....A rare and exhilarating true-life tale
Booklist
Those who survived the Depression never forgot it. Veterans selling apples on street corners. Women taking in washing to survive. Children going without lunch. But along with the bitter memories come the sweet. It was a time when a hungry traveler appearing at the back door of a house might get a job, or at least a glass of cold water. A period when the homeless weren't seen as eyesores, but as neighbors who'd fallen on hard times. Campbell attorney Russell L. Hofvendahl remembers those times well. A San Francisco 15-year-old with a strong case of wanderlust and a pressing need of a job he worked on a four-masted schooner, a story he told in 1983's Hard on the Wind. Now, in A Land So Fair and Bright, he tells what happened when he stepped ashore. Hofvendahl liked sailing, a lot. But he didn't much like his new berth as a messman on a Swedish freighter. So, with a friend, he jumped ship in Canada in 1938 and set out to find his fortune working the wheat harvest. At $1 a day, the fortune wasn't there to be found. But what Hofvendahl did discover was life as a Knight of the Road a hobo. Riding boxcars, hitching rides and tramping on foot he crossed the continent twice. In North Dakota he bluffed his way into a job driving a team of horses and almost lost his life. In New York he found a job as a clothes presser, and a romance. Crossing the Southwest, he had to be careful to elude police, railroad thugs and violent drifters. Yet almost everywhere, he found trusting people, willing to help. This is a wonderful tale of one boy's coming of age and a country and a life that may never be again.
San Jose Mercury News
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