Born in Oklahoma, Woody Guthrie became a figure larger than life, a folk singer who captured the spirit of his times in his enduring songs: This Land Is Your Land, So Long, It's Been Good to Know You, Going Down This Road Feeling Bad, and so many more. Although he was always proud to be called an Okie, his life was on the road; he was a patriot and a political radical, but he was marked by the FBI as a subversive. He lived in fear of the deadly fires that stalked his family, and of the mental illness that snared his mother. At the age of forty-two, Woody was cruelly silenced by Huntingdon's Disease. Ed Cray is the first biographer to be granted access to the Woody Guthrie Archive, and he has interviewed over seventy of the people who knew Woody best. On this basis he creates a haunting portrait of an American original who profoundly influenced Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, and American popular music itself.