Peter Martin knows he is destined for something bigger than life in his hometown of Galloway. But as he spends one last golden summer idling, smoking and writing, he is haunted by the feeling that, perhaps, some terrible, unnameable future awaits him. Jack Kerouac's lyrical, moving coming-of-age novella beautifully evokes a suburban America of drugstores, shady porches, gas stations and baseball games.

Lost mysteriously in 1944, it is now published for the first time, along with Kerouac's revealing notes, sketches, reflections and correspondence from the time.'Offers a fascinating insight into his life before he wrote the Bible of the Beats... comes out of the past to remind us where that long road of his life took Jack Kerouac Where it started. All the way back home' John Sutherland, The Times