A story of hitchhiking the interstate and highways in the 1980’s.

At age 15, novelist Vanessa Veselka ran away from home and began living life as a hitchhiker in the United States during the 1980s. From highway to highway, coast to coast, truck stop to truck stop, Veselka experienced poverty, perversion, and a showdown with a potential serial killer. She shares her story at the MacDowell Colony for Artists where she works on her second novel, Light the Lamp With the Last of the Whale Oil (Riverhead Books).

Photos by Robert Johansson. Music by Dan Svizeny