Tramp

Using newspaper accounts and court records from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Joelle Biele’s poems tell the personal stories of women who left their homes and families to tramp the roads and rails. Driven by poverty, abuse, or a desire for a better life, these women often encountered misery and danger in their quest for freedom, as interviews and printed records attest. In Tramp, Biele weaves these real-life stories into poignant and insightful verse that gives us a window into previously unexplored lives.