How to Run Away From Home, An Adventurer's Manifesto

by Jerry Ellis

Jerry Ellis was the first person in the modern world to walk the 900 mile route of the Cherokee Trail of Tears, and his book about that journey, Walking the Trail, One Man's Journey Along the Cherokee Trail of Tears, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize by Random House. He attributes this accomplishment to many years of lifting weights and his life on the open road. He thumbed enough miles to circle the globe five times by the age of twenty-six. How to Run Away From Home is a gritty, poetic, lusty, and spiritual page-turner with universal appeal about a mixed-blood Cherokee torn between the sacred and the secular as he ventures to educate himself about the meaning of life, the ways of the world, and rise above his poverty. On the road he gets involved with a daring range of characters: Mr. Universe, the Hell's Angels, the New York Italian Mafia, Gypsies, a member of the French Foreign Legion, and many other bigger than life characters as well as the person who picks up your trash and cuts your hair. In short, this book plunges its head into the guts and soul of America and doesn't always come out smelling like a rose. Still, its sticky scent seduces, haunts, entertains and inspires a reader to think and feel beyond the tedious norm.

80 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 4, 2014

About the author

Jerry Ellis, Cherokee and Scottish, graduated from the University of Alabama. He was the first person in the modern world to walk the 900 mile route of the Cherokee Trail of Tears, where 4,000 of his ancestors died in 1838: Seven thousand armed US Soldiers marched them from their homes in the SE to present day Oklahoma in the heart of winter. Many of the Cherokee had no shoes. They were buried in shallow unmarked graves. Ellis' book about his trek, WALKING THE TRAIL, ONE MAN'S JOURNEY ALONG THE CHEROKEE TRAIL OF TEARS, was published by Random House and nominated by the publisher for a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award. The book was endorsed by Dee Brown, author of BURY MY HEART AT WOUNDED KNEE. WALKING THE TRAIL was included in two anthologies, one by Norton, and it was quoted in Reader's Digest. Last year it went on display in the National Teachers Hall of Fame. Ellis has lectured about his trek, the book and the Cherokee in Asia, Africa, Europe and USA. He has had four non-fiction history/adventure books published by Random House and has written for the New York Times. He has had five plays produced. His fifth book, CIAO FROM ROMA! SPRING IN THE ETERNAL CITY OF LOVE, is on Kindle at Amazon. His sixth and new book, THE BOY WITH GIANT HANDS, is also on Kindle. Ellis lives in both Fort Payne, Alabama and in Rome, Italy. He has traveled to six continents and speaks Spanish and Italian.