Western Starlands is a special book, a tautly lyrical account of traversing the United States in the early 1990s. It belongs to the tradition of American travel narratives, and it’s there, in the stars around names like Kerouac and Pirsig, that Dunne carves his initials with wry humor and a lasting sweetness and lucidity. Here are friends like the ones you had, or like the ones you wished for. Here are places you used to know and dream about. Here’s the journey you longed to make, here’s a chance you should have taken.

– Hugh Sheehy, author of Design Flaw and The Invisibles

Part stoner road journal, part coming-of-age narrative set in the apocalyptic wasteland of the 1990s American West. Dunne’s language is at times reflective and at others vividly concrete. The detritus of post-industrial life remains in the forefront: the fully fleshed-out characters navigate a labyrinth of decaying vehicles, forgotten suburban ravines, scrub-desert vistas, spiritual anxiety, and an increasingly complex network of migratory road people. While taking seriously the concerns of a teenager set loose in the world, this story manages not to get lost in or fetishize those concerns. The result is a sober meditation on freedom and responsibility that at the same time manages to stay ridiculously high most of the time.

– Patrick Tonks

Beautiful imagery, inspiring narrative, and brutally honest. It speaks to a legacy of an American traveling subculture of hobos, tramps, and Beats searching the land for meaning and having a hell of a time along the way. A tale like this one can't really happen as much these days because of how technology has so changed our lives. Its a wild ride!

– Joe Denny, Author and Illustrator of Sick World and Americanjisim