As a traveling musician in California is based on the diary entries of a friend of Paul Colberg. Full of drive and hope, he travels to New York in 1888 to pursue a career as a musician. However, he quickly realizes that in the New World, not everything is as glorious as it was told. His journey takes him further across the country until he finally arrives in California. It is a story full of courage and adventure, but also despair and disappointment. Through the diary perspective, the reader is always in the midst of the protagonist's joys and sorrows. Along the way, they also get to know a North America just before the turn of the century, complex and beyond all history books. A carefully edited reprint of the original edition from 1907.