The Road is a narrative memoir by Jack London. It is London's experiences as a hobo in the 1890s, during the worst economic depression the United. He describes his adventures hopping freight trains, "holding down" a train when the crew is trying to throw him off, begging for food and money, and making up extraordinary stories to fool the police. He also tells of the thirty days that he spent in the Erie County Penitentiary, which he described as a place of "shocking horrors," after being arrested for vagrancy.