What happens when you’re broke and you need to get to a new job, an ailing parent, a powwow, or a funeral on the other side of the country? After decades of globalization, what kind of America will you glimpse out the window on your way? For five years, Kath Weston rode the bus to find out.

Traveling Light is not another book about people stuck in poverty. Rather, it’s a book about how people move through poverty and their insights into the sweeping economic changes that affect us all.

Weston’s route takes her through Northeastern cities buried under layoffs, an immigration raid in the Southwest, an antiwar rally in the capitol, and the path traced by Hurricane Katrina. Like any road story, this one has characters that linger in the imagination: the trucker who has to give up his rig to have an operation; the teenager who can turn any Hollywood movie into a rap song; the homeless veteran who dreams of running his own shrimp boat; the sketch artist who breathes life into African American history; the single mother scrambling for loose change.