Travels with Lizbeth: Three Years on the Road and on the Streets is Lars Eighner's account of his descent into homelessness and his adventures on the streets that has moved, charmed, and amused generations of readers.
"When I began writing this account I was living under a shower curtain in a stand of bamboo in a public park. I did not undertake to write about homelessness, but wrote what I knew, as an artist paints a still life, not because he is especially fond of fruit, but because the subject is readily at hand."
Containing the widely anthologized essay "On Dumpster Diving," Travels with Lizbeth is a beautifully written account of one man's experience of homelessness, a story of physical survival, and the triumph of the artistic spirit in the face of enormous adversity. In his unique voice-dry, disciplined, poignant, comic-Eighner celebrates the companionship of his dog, Lizbeth, and recounts their ongoing struggle to survive on the streets of Austin, Texas, and hitchhiking along the highways to Southern California and back.
"The most eloquent description to date of what it is like to be homeless."
San Diego Union-Tribune
"Lars Eighner's memoir contains the finest first-person writing we have about the experience of being homeless in America. Yet it's not a dirge or a Bukowski-like scratching of the groin but an offbeat and plaintive hymn to life."
Dwight Garner, The New York Times Book Review
"Compelling…Mr. Eighner [is] a quirky guide into the homeless condition as he plunges on, through Miracle Miles, desert flea markets and dusty truck stops."
