Sister of the Road: The Autobiography of Box-Car Bertha

By: Ben L. Reitman

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Synopsis: Born in the shadows of a railroad yard, of a wandering mother who took her lovers where she found them and a father who was scarcely conscious of her arrival in the world, Bertha Thompson took to &‘the road&’ as soon as the restless impulses of adolescence stirred in her. She was more interested in wanders than those who settled down in homes, more interested in criminals than law-abiding citizens. She wanted to see how they lived, live as they did, know what they were like.As a result of her restlessness and curiosity, she became, in fifteen years of wandering, a hobo, treveling from one end of the country to the other in box-cars, &“decking&” passenger trains, and hitchhiking; member of a gang of shoplifters, traveling as the mistress of one of the men; a prostitute working in a Chicago brothel; the mother of a child of an unknown father; and a research worker for a New York social service bureau.Sister of the Road is Bertha&’s own story of those fifteen years and the record of her conclusions about them. Gifted with a naturally keen intelligence, fearless of consequences to herself, willing and eager to do and be everything which other members of her group did and were, her story is a mine of little-known information and a succession of moving human stories about that vast and growing army of homeless, jobless, wandering women who live by begging, stealing, cheating, prostituting themselves, and occasionally working at legitimate jobs.