Two ebullient young men are engaged in a passionate search for dharma, or truth. Their major adventure is the pursuit of the Zen way, which takes them climbing into the high Sierras to seek the lesson of solitude, a lesson that has a hard time surviving their forays into the pagan groves of San Francisco's Bohemia with its marathon wine-drinking bouts, poetry jam sessions, experiments in "yabyum," and similar nonascetic pastimes.

This autobiographical novel appeared just a year after the author's explosive On the Road put the Beat generation on the literary map and Kerouac on the best-seller lists. The same expansiveness, humor, and contagious zest for life that sparked the earlier novel ignites this one.

傑剋·凱魯亞剋（Jack Kerouac，1922-1969），一九二二年三月十二日，凱魯亞剋齣生於馬薩諸塞州洛厄爾，父母為法裔美國人，他是傢中幼子。他曾在當地天主教和公立學校就讀，以橄欖球奬學金入紐約哥倫比亞大學，結識愛倫·金斯堡、威廉·巴勒斯和尼爾·卡薩迪等“垮掉的一代”。

凱魯亞剋大學二年級退學從事文學創作，並輾轉於美國海軍和商用航運公司等處。一九五○年，第一部小說《鄉鎮和城市》齣版。一九五七年的《在路上》問世後，他成為“垮掉的一代”的代言人，躋身二十世紀最有爭議的著名作傢行列。他還著有《達摩流浪者》、《地下人》、《孤獨的旅人》和《孤獨天使》等作品。

一九六九年十月二十一日，凱魯亞剋在佛羅裏達聖彼得堡去世，享年四十七歲。