Born in the shadows of a railroad yard, of a wandering mother who took her lovers where she found them and a father who was scarcely conscious of her arrival in the world, Bertha Thompson took to "the road" as soon as the restless impulses of adolescence stirred in her....

As a result of her restlessness and curiousity, she became in fifteen years of wandering, a hobo, traveling from one end of the country to the other in box-cars, "decking" passenger trains, and hitch-hiking; member of gang of shoplifters, with whom she traveled, as the mistress of one of the men, for months; a prostitute, working in a Chicago brothel; the mother of a child of an unknown father; and a research worker for a New York social service bureau.

Sister of the Road is Bertha's own story of those fifteen years and the record of her conclusions about them. ...her story is a mine of little-known information about that vast and growing army of homeless, jobless, wandering women who live by begging, stealing, cheating, prostituting themselves, and occasionally working at legitimate jobs.

Added to the running narrative is an appendix containing the tabulated results of Box-Car Bertha's observations and study of her own problem, which alone constitute a sociological text-book on one of the most fascinating problems of modern society....