When the acclaimed author of Where Is Nicaragua? went in search of America's growing underclass--the persistent poor--he discovered a frighteningly large segment of the population for whom our cherished notions of equal opportunity and freedom for all are nothing but a mockery. Told in starkly human terms, courageous and compassionate, If You Came This Way is Peter Davis's shattering sojourn among our hopelessly impoverished fellow Americans ...young and old, victims and vagabonds, the struggling unemployed and the simply unemployable. Their strengths and weaknesses, fears and anxieties, needs and desires will surprise and haunt you. Praise for Peter Davis's. Where Is Nicaragua? This superb book is not only the definitive news about Nicaragua; it makes the ongoing news finally understandable. It is as elegantly written as V. S. Naipul's The Loss of El Dorado. Mr. Davis does not make his case in the manner of the polemicist; he convinces us morally in the manner of a good novelist. --John Irving. Stunning piece of firsthand reportage...he has captured the nuance, the ambiguity, the irony and the outright comedy of life among the Sandinistas and the contras. --J. Anthony Lukas. A brilliant examination of the process of revolution in Central America by a most gifted writer. Wonderfully written, it is filled with pleasures and insights. --Robert Stone.