SOURCE: “The Road from There to Here,” in Los Angeles Times Book Review, July 31, 1994, p. 2.

In the following review, Max presents a detailed synopsis of Roadwalkers, while placing the novel in the larger context of Grau's oeuvre.

Pulitzer Prize-winner Shirley Ann Grau's ninth work of fiction [Roadwalkers] begins promisingly as a sweeping social novel in the no-longer-fashionable fashion of John Steinbeck:

In 1934 this is the way it was. Homeless people were moving in a steady flow across the southern part of the country, back and forth across the surface of the earth, seaweed on a tide that ebbed and rose according to seasons, following rumors and hopes, propelled from place to place by police and sheriffs and farmers with shotguns, and closed doors and locked gates. … They were called roadwalkers.”

Early on in her nearly 40-year career as a writer, Grau established a reputation for leavening her expertise...