This book is a collection of famed journalist Ernie Pyle's writings about the South West. The roads were bad, and nonexistent in many parts of the SW, when Ernie Pyle made his expeditions into the realm of solitude. The depression was gripping the nation during 1935-39, the period covered by these columns. He had been saddened by the sight of penniless America. Selling Apples, desperately seeking work, drifting from one place to another, blinded by the grip of the dust bowl, beset by cold and hunger in the big city. Ernie Pyle was seeking solace, not alone for himself, but for all Americans. He was a vicarious emissary of the destitute, dreaming of a Valhalla in the promised land. He thought the promised land as a whole, might be in the desert, and that is where he searched for it.