Young Maurice Keeler dreamed of coming to America as a boy in wartime England where American GI's had candy in their pockets and the movies showed a life of glamour and cowboys and Indians.
his dreams came true a few years later, when he flew to America to take a promised job--one dream that didn't turn out so well. He persevered, traveling the country, meeting people from all walks of life, from former presidents to young summer workers in a national park.
Maurice also describes his early life as a naval student, an apprentice, and a junior engineer on British ships that roamed the world.
The title, "Travels in Darkest America," is a play on an 1891 Travel-and-adventure story, "In Darkest America," by Henry Morton Stanley, the intrepid journalist who encountered Dr. David Livingstone and uttered the classic phrase "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?"
The phrase "travels in darkest America" was jokingly said by two English girls who were traveling with Keeler, and it became the headline in a story that was written about the three young girls English travelers in a Missouri newspaper.