American OZ: An Astonishing Year Inside Traveling Carnivals at State Fairs & Festivals: Hitchhiking From California to New York, Alaska to Mexico

Written by Michael Sean Comerford

Narrated by Michael Sean Comerford

“MAJESTIC! ... DEEP OBSERVATIONS ON LIFE!” – CHICAGO TRIBUNE

American OZ is a rollicking, gritty, adventurous year in the secretive subculture of traveling carnivals. You’ll never see your state fair or neighborhood festival the same again.

It’s a new classic American road story! Comerford writes a bold, inspiring true story of a year working shoulder-to-shoulder with the colorful characters and legends of carnivals.

Read stories of freaks, a carnival pimp, a tramp gold miner, and the last King of the Sideshows. An insult dunk tank clown is shot. Masked gunmen rob his carnival. And a young showman friend dies on the road.

Hitchhike with him to shows in California, New Jersey, New York, Chicago, Alaska, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Texas, Georgia, and Florida where he works in a freak show. He becomes the #1 hitchhiker in the USA.

Travel to the lawless foothills of Mexico to a village that empties out of men each season as they head north to carnivals

Explore issues of the American caste system, working poor, immigration, and the life force of collective joy.

People seek love and meaning on the road. And we find the world runs on untold stories.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Comerford Publishing LLC
• Release date: Jan 16, 2021
• ISBN: 9781952693069

Michael Sean Comerford

Michael Sean Comerford is an award-winning former international journalist who worked in Chicago, New York, Budapest, and Moscow.He’s bicycled across the USA four times and hitchhiked across America, Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa. He’s ridden freight trains and rounded up cattle out West, studied Buddhism in the Himalayas, and won a heavyweight boxing championship in Ireland.Comerford toured almost 100 countries, swam the headwaters of the Nile, fought off a hippo attack, and toured ecological disaster areas in the Amazon.He lives in the Chicago area to be near his daughter Grace. He’s promised her that he’ll stay closer to home for a while.His byline has appeared in the Huffington Post, Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun-Times, Daily Herald, Copley News Service, New York Daily News, Budapest Sun, Budapest Business Journal, and The Moscow Times.He has a master's degree from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism; a journalism fellowship at the University of Maryland, College Park; video training certificate from the Poynter Institute of Media Studies; a B.A. from Marquette University; junior year at University of College Cork, Ireland.Comerford has won several Peter Lisagor, Associated Press, and other awards.He lives in the Chicago area to be near his daughter Grace. He's promised her that he'll stay closer to home for a while.