In 2001, David LeBrun travelled to Costa Rica to reconnect with an old friend. LeBrun, a young writer at the end of a string of dead-end jobs, planned on living cheaply for a winter while finishing the book he thought would make his career. (And, of course, drinking every night and getting stoned every day. And maybe stealing the occasional pill.) But once there, he was swept up in his friend’s self-destruction and ran out of money far sooner than expected.

What followed was an epic odyssey across Central America and Mexico, hitchhiking with random strangers and sleeping anywhere he could as his mental health deteriorated and he tried to finish his book; along the way, he met down-and-out street buskers, a narcissistic thief, a Bible-thumper with multiple personalities, ex-convicts in a Narcotics Anonymous shelter—but, more importantly, himself.

Delirium Vitae is a new classic, an On the Road for the twenty-first century. Alternately charming and harrowing, it looks beneath the romance of adventure in a foreign land to see what it’s really like to teeter between freedom and homelessness. (Because, let’s be honest, walking thirty-six kilometers on an empty stomach, or fending off a sweaty and shirtless truck driver, does suck.) It’s a fantastic book that looks not only at the excitement of the open road, but at why we go there, and what we leave behind—and whether we can ever still come home.