Nick is a nineteen-year-old college student at UC Berkeley who quits his Lake Tahoe summer job to see America and meet Americans, face-to-face, hitching rides from Tahoe to Los Angeles, New Orleans, Miami, New York City, and points in-between. He witnesses Jim Crow segregation in the South. He meets Yvonne, the daughter of a Palm Beach socialite. He learns something unexpected about his mother from his Aunt Rose’s family photo album. World War II vets pick him up and tell him about their war experience and how it affects their current lives. He meets Oliver, a civil rights activist in Mississippi, and Gina, an aspiring Olympic swimmer, and Lorena, an aging silent film star in Palm Springs. He consoles Rosa, a young Mexican woman who has committed a mortal sin.

Hitchhiking Across America: 1963 by Daniel Robinson is about how America is changing. World War II, Civil rights, Vietnam, social mores, McCarthyism…all these things play a role.