Picking up where Jonathan Shaw's critically-acclaimed Scab Vendor: Confessions of a Tattoo Artist left off, Homeward Bound resumes the story of Cigano, the tattoo man. Cigano continues his full-body tattoo work on a young acolyte, Jaco, who eagerly soaks up his tales. Homeward Bound continues charting the amazing course of a life measured in extremes and all the singular people, exotic places, and outrageous events that shaped it into a survivor's tale of epic proportions. In its pages, Shaw takes the reader deeper than ever before, not only into the bizarre recesses of his extraordinary mind and incredible adventures, but also into the strange and magical process of memoir writing itself.

Homeward Bound is proof positive that truth is indeed stranger than fiction. As Shaw's old friend and literary mentor Charles Bukowski once told him, most of this book would have to be lived before it could be written. In that sense, Homeward Bound is much more than a compelling, page-turning chronicle of a popular working-class hero's creative evolution. It is a multicolored, cinematic modern-day Odyssey, written in blood, ink and tears - a kaleidoscopic, visionary roadmap to the journey of the human soul.

You might know of Jonathan Shaw as the first tattoo artist to ever appear on The Tonight Show with David Letterman. Or maybe you've seen his likeness depicted by Pulitzer Prize-winning artist Art Spiegelman on the cover of the stately old The New Yorker. Or you might know him as the son of legendary Swing-era bandleader Artie Shaw--or maybe the tattooed thug playing opposite Clint Eastwood in the movie Tightrope. You may have seen the magazine Jonathan Shaw founded back in the 90s, International Tattoo Art, at your local newsstand. Or you could have read his book, Narcisa: Our Lady of Ashes, published by Johnny Depp's HarperCollins imprint, or his recent visual exploration of tattoo art, Vintage Tattoo Flash. You may have read mind-boggling excerpts from his long-awaited memoir-style novel, Scab Vendor: Confessions of a Tattoo Artist online. Or maybe you only remember the name Jonathan Shaw as the infamous "tattoo artist to the stars" who recently made headline news for being indicted by a New York City Grand Jury and charged with 89 felony counts of illegal weapons possession.

Or . . . maybe you've never heard of Jonathan Shaw at all.

For decades, Jonathan Shaw was a world-renowned celebrity tattoo artist. Over the course of his well-documented career, he was one of the most infamous and influential tattoo men on the planet. Described by Iggy Pop as "the great nightmare anti-hero of the New Age," Shaw's client list included names like Johnny Depp, The Cure, The Velvet Underground, The Pogues, The Ramones, Marilyn Manson, Jim Jarmusch, Joe Coleman, Johnny Winter, Kate Moss, Orlando Bloom, Tupac Shakur and the notorious Great Train Robber, Ronald Biggs. Jonathan Shaw is still one of the most respected names in the tattoo profession today--despite having retired over 15 years ago from an industry with an absurdly short memory--an industry he was instrumental in pioneering.