At age twenty-two, writer Chris Urquhart left a life of middle-class comfort to document the lives of these young nomads for a magazine feature. Captivated, she followed them for three more years. In honest prose interspersed with photographs portraying the grimy beauty of nomadic life, Dirty Kids tells the story of how Urquhart lived alongside runaways, crust punks, and dropouts, hippies, Deadheads, and Rainbows in an attempt to belong in their world.