Walking to America

Walking To America follows and recreates the immense journey, in search of a new life and of a miracle doctor who could cure the blindness of one of their number. The journey was taken largely on foot by a small working-class family unit from England in the 1880s, to Liverpool, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, New Orleans, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and back again. Written as travelogue and as a history of one of the great neglected subjects - the New World immigrants who returned home to the Old, Walking to America is a personal tale, full of characterisation and human stories, based upon received lore, followed footsteps and careful historical research.An epic, covering thousands of miles and cultures and environments as diverse as the Victorian UK coalfields, the great imperial entrepot of Liverpool, the post-bellum American south, roaring 1880s New Orleans, the stew of the free-for-all Pittsburgh mines, Texas in the wake of the Alamo, the unclaimed Indian Territory of North America and the ultimate frontier of the Petrified Forest in Arizona - all seen through the eyes of a small group of identifiable and sympathetic, real and ordinary men, women and children from the north-east of England. Walking to America is a great and gripping adventure of discovery, hope and loss. And it is all true.

Roger Hutchinson is an award-winning author and journalist. After working as an editor in London, in 1977 he joined the West Highland Free Press in Skye. Since then he has published thirteen books, including Polly: the True Story Behind Whisky Galore. He is still a columnist for the WHFP, and has written for BBC Radio, The Scotsman, The Guardian, The Herald and The Literary Review. His book The Soap Man (Birlinn 2003) was shortlisted for the Saltire Scottish Book of the Year (2004) and the bestselling Calum's Road (2007) was shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature's Ondaatje Prize.