Nineteen-year-old Sebastien Ranes spends his days knocking around Eagle River, Alaska, and his nights working as a janitor. His girlfriend's father hates him and his own parents' opinion of him isn't much better. Broke and down on his luck, Sebastien robs a grocery store, making off with nearly $4,000. His image is all over the television within hours, but before Sebastien can be arrested, a drunk driver smashes into his Jeep in the middle of town. Things couldn't get much worse until a Marine recruiter who witnesses the accident gives Sebastien a ride home...and a way out. Embarking on an unexpected journey, the Marine Corps shows Sebastien another world - of abuse and authority, of war and compassion, of lust and consequences - and by the time he returns home, he'll be forever changed.
Ushered out from his Stockton, California home by his emotionally detached mother and her latest boyfriend, twelve-year-old Sebastien Ranes must fend for himself and travel two thousand miles across the country. He is on his way to live with his grandmother and sister in Pennsylvania. Along the way, he will learn that sometimes caring, guidance and understanding can come from some unlikely people. Marcus, a fellow bus passenger, is a man who has been neglected more by society than his family. As a young black ex-con, he is not the epitome of the person most would pick as a chaperone for their child's cross country trip. Yet rather than be held apart by their differences, Marcus and Sebastien are drawn together by the things that make us all alike. Along the way, he acts as both guide and protector, as Virgil was to Dante and Jim to Huck Finn. Imparting his own style of wisdom, he shows Sebastien that, despite the darker parts of the human condition, people can and do care for one another. This is a modern day journey not just from one house to another. This is a journey taken by a young boy into manhood, and by the listener into his world. Like every trip, there are many stops along the way. But this journey differs in the way young Sebastien arrives at his destination. Greyhound is the story of this journey.
