A Tramp's Wallet

In A Tramp's Wallet, Sam Pickering spends six months roaming Australia and New Zealand, tramping landscapes pocked by sheep stations, mountains rip-rapped by scree, art galleries and bakeries, and always libraries. Pickering lectures on a cruise ship, travels the Murray River on a paddle wheeler, and rides the train from Sydney to Perth.

The saunterings of one of America's best and most popular essayists stretch the seams of A Tramp's Wallet, the coins of the page being six months spent alone in Australia and New Zealand. Far from the hoes and saws that prune days into convention, life flourishes, and this book is weedy and rankly rich with thought and description. "Lord," St. Odo of Cluny said on his deathbed, "I have loved the beauty of thy house." In A Tramp's Wallet, Sam Pickering records his love of that house, and, if truth must out, his love for a few neglected out buildings barns and backhouses, even the ramshakled huts of thought.