While it might be more appropriate to find Travels with Charley: In Search of America (Viking Penguin, 1962) in the fiction section instead of nonfiction, the book is still worth reading.

Much has been written about whether author John Steinbeck really met the people he writes about or even if he traveled to the places he said he went. It was classified as travel, nonfiction for years until people started putting two and two together and they didn’t come up with four.

Steinbeck did go on a road trip with his dog in 1960. The exact details of it, well, those are up for debate.

Nonetheless, I thoroughly enjoyed listening to Travels with Charley. How can a book about traveling with your dog, seeing parts of the country you haven’t been to, revisiting the place you called home, and meeting people along the way not be entertaining?

Sixty plus years later it really isn’t relevant what is true and what isn’t. It’s possible the people he writes about are compilations of people he met. Or maybe they are purely characters in what should be called a novel. My guess, is the tales are a combination of truisms and fiction.

He wrote about the right mix of people to keep the reader (or listener as the case was with me) going. He shared experiences of traveling by car.

It’s an easy book to get through. All but when he travels to the South. Racism should never be easy to plow through. He writes about a significant part of our history that we continue to struggle with.

Overall, I would recommend this book.