The town is Galloway in Massachusetts, birthplace of the five sons and three daughters of the Martin family in the early 1900s. The city is New York, the vast and heaving melting pot which lures them all in search of futures and identity. Nearly a decade before the publication of On the Road, the story of the Martins epic transformation in The Town and the City marked the first true literary impact of the founding father of the Beat Generation. Inspired by grief over his fathers death, and his own determination to write the Great American Novel, The Town and the City is an essential prelude to Jack Kerouacs later classics.