The Last Great Road Bum Audiobook By Héctor Tobar cover art

The Last Great Road Bum

A Novel

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The Last Great Road Bum

By: Héctor Tobar
Narrated by: Timothy Andrés Pabon
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About this listen

"Narrator Pabón delivers a top-notch performance of Tobar’s masterful blend of fiction and nonfiction.... Pabón's understated delivery allows listeners to make their own discoveries in this truly unique and intriguing story." (Booklist)

In The Last Great Road Bum, Héctor Tobar turns the peripatetic true story of a naive son of Urbana, Illinois, who died fighting with guerrillas in El Salvador into the great American novel for our times.

Joe Sanderson died in pursuit of a life worth writing about. He was, in his words, a "road bum", an adventurer and a storyteller, belonging to no place, people, or set of ideas. He was born into a childhood of middle-class contentment in Urbana, Illinois, and died fighting with guerillas in Central America. With these facts, acclaimed novelist and journalist Héctor Tobar set out to write what would become The Last Great Road Bum.

A decade ago, Tobar came into possession of the personal writings of the late Joe Sanderson, which chart Sanderson’s freewheeling course across the known world, from Illinois to Jamaica, to Vietnam, to Nigeria, to El Salvador - a life determinedly an adventure, ending in unlikely, anonymous heroism.

The Last Great Road Bum is the great American novel Joe Sanderson never could have written, but did truly live - a fascinating, timely hybrid of fiction and nonfiction that only a master of both like Héctor Tobar could pull off.

A Macmillan Audio production from MCD.

©2020 Héctor Tobar (P)2020 Macmillan Audio
Biographical Fiction Fiction Latino American Literary Fiction United States Adventure
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What listeners say about The Last Great Road Bum

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Amazing novel on a local life

So glad to finally read the story of my friend's brother. An amazing adventuresome life.

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Why have we never heard of Joe Sanderson?

An amazing story about a young American man from the Midwest who travels the world looking for adventure and ends helping the Revolutionaries in El Salvador. A touching and thoughtful moment when he teaches them to swim...a basic skill for most Americans to learn at a young age. And a story of unconditional love. His mother weaves into this story as she saved every letter Joe wrote to her from afar. Lovely and bittersweet.

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Bored to death

I cannot get interested in this book no matter how many times I've tried! even though I live in Illinois and am familiar with all of the town's in the book. please credit my account! ugh.

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