Sister of the Road: The Autobiography of Box Car Bertha

by Bertha Thompson and Ben L. Reitman

Book Overview

Another raging slab of real American history you're not likely to find in the textbooks. This is second title in the new (and best-selling ) Nabat series that debuted with Jack Black's You Can't Win. It's a window into a wildly under-appreciated dropout culture that gets left out of the stultifying fairytales that pass for history books--a much more rowdy and messily interesting tradition than the guardians of propriety, steeped in those...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1902593030
• ISBN13: 9781902593036
• Release Date: May 2002
• Publisher: AK Press
• Length: 208 Pages
• Weight: 0.64 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Of course it is fiction

While it is true that the book is fiction, it was written by Ben Reitman, and if anyone knows about his life, this could be considered the autobiography that he never wrote. So while the person Boxcar Bertha may have not existed in real life, what she went through and who she saw are real and based upon events that occured to Ben and many others. The book when it first came out was fiction, and most then knew it. It somehow was forgotten along the way.

Doesn't matter that it's fiction

Take it with a grain of salt. It's an interesting look at hoboism, sex, drugs, pimping, anarchy and Depression era Americana. I remember reading this book at the laundromat in Alhambra. It was quite a page turner. It doesn't matter that it's fiction disguised as an autobiography. It's still a fun read.

Another great book from the folks at AK.

Another raging slab of real American history you're not likely to find in the textbooks. This is the second title in the new Nabat series from AK Press that debut with Jack Black's You Can't Win. It's a window into a wildly under-appreciated dropout culture that gets left out of the stultifying fairytales that pass for history books - a much more rowdy and messily interesting tradition than the guardians of property, steeped in those other great American traditions of puritanism and hypocrisy, let on.Hobo jungles, bughouses, whorehouses, Chicago's Main Stem, IWW meeting halls, skid rows and open freight cars - these were the haunts of the free thinking and free loving Bertha Thompson. This vivid autobiography recounts one hell of a rugged woman's hard-living depression-era saga of misadventures with pimps, hopheads, murderers, yeggs, wobblies, and anarchists.