Travels with Charley in Search of America

Steinbeck set out from Long Island in a pick-up truck fitted with a camper, which he named Rocinante after Don Quixote's horse, accompanied by his standard poodle, Charley.

The route looped through the North, the West Coast and the South and back to New York, covering close to ten thousand miles. Steinbeck wanted to rediscover the country he had written about for years, and the book is as much a self-portrait as a travelogue. Published in 1962, it includes his encounters with ordinary people along the way and a sober look at racial tension in the South. Some readers have questioned how literally it should be taken, so it is best approached as a writer's personal reflection.