A profile of the iconic author's early years offers insight into his efforts to bridge his dual cultural heritage while exploring how his French Canadian background enriched his prose.

Here is Jack Kerouac's story, as recorded through the voices of his friends and lovers. Authors Barry Gifford and Lawrence Lee retraced Kerouac's life at home and on the road and talked with the prophets, musicians, poets, socialites, and working people who knew him. Some are famous (Allen Ginsberg, Gore Vidal, William Burroughs) ; some are not (Jack's boyhood buddies, his lovers, his barroom companions). All have contributed to a remarkably vibrant,...

"We had finally found the magic land at the end of the road and we never dreamed the extent of the magic." Mexico, an escape route, inspiration, and ecstatic terminus of the celebrated novel On the Road, was crucial to Jack Kerouac's creative development. In this dramatic and highly compelling account, Jorge García-Robles, leading authority on the Beats in Mexico, re-creates both the actual events and the literary imaginings of Kerouac in what became...