11 h 46 minAudiobook14 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at cost
Audiobook edition · 11 h 46 minPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What if a prison can bind your body, but cannot hold the lives you carry inside?
In Jack London's The Jacket (The Star-Rover), Darrell Standing is a former professor serving life for murder in San Quentin. Warden Atherton believes he is hiding dynamite. To force a confession, officials lace Standing into a canvas straitjacket until pain fills his world.
Fellow prisoner Ed Morrell teaches Standing a trance he calls the little death. Through it, Standing leaves his body and enters past lives across distant lands and centuries. His journeys turn a prison story into an adventure through sea, war and wilderness, while his captors keep trying to break him.
What you’ll discover
- A cell without limits Follow Standing beyond his bound body into lives the prison walls cannot contain.
- Survival on distant shores Meet Adam Strang, cast ashore in Korea, and Daniel Foss, alone on a Pacific island.
- Cruelty brought into focus Face London's attack on prison conditions through the canvas jacket and the dungeon.
- One soul, many struggles Travel with an emigrant wagon train and a hunter fighting to protect his family.
- Freedom under unbearable pressure Explore the novel's claim that the spirit can resist what confines the body.
Who will love it
This book suits readers who love a fierce narrator, adventure stories set in many ages, and bold questions about mind and body. It also rewards anyone curious about prisons and American writing from the early 1900s.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A condemned professor opens his memoir
- A poet's lie sends Standing into the dark
- Solitary confinement makes three minds into a company
- The jacket is a cruelty that teaches endurance
- Morrell's trick lets the mind leave the body
- Two lives show what the past is made of
- Adam Strang rises and falls in Korea
- Ragnar Lodbrog and Daniel Foss test the spirit
- The book argues that spirit outlasts matter
- A frame of voices holds memoir and tales together
Who’s who
- Darrell StandingA former professor of agronomy serving a life term who learns to leave his body in the jacket and relive earlier lives.
- Ed MorrellA loyal fellow prisoner in solitary who teaches Standing the secret of willing the body to die.
- Jake OppenheimerThe Human Tiger, a sharp skeptic and brave friend who taps out chess and arguments from a faraway cell.
- Warden AthertonThe prison chief who wants hidden dynamite and tries to break Standing in the jacket.
- Captain JamieThe Captain of the Yard who believes the dynamite story and drives the search for it.
- Cecil WinwoodA poet and forger who invents the dynamite plot to win his own freedom.
- Doctor JacksonThe prison doctor who is sure no jacket can kill Standing and keeps the torment going.
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- Read by Lucas Linden, complete. It opens once the recording is online.
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- Hardcover
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- Large print hardcover
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El vagabundo de las estrellas
by Jack London · 1915
A condemned professor escapes San Quentin's straitjacket by willing his body to die, then roams through time.
Medium level5–10 hours to readEspañol
Learn a language with medium classicsEspañolFrancésAlemánItalianoJaponésPortuguésInglésHow we measure levels
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In short
What if a man laced into a canvas straitjacket could walk out of his cell and live other lives? Darrell Standing, a former professor of agronomy, says he does exactly that.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A condemned professor opens his memoir
Darrell Standing writes from a cell at Folsom Prison. He says he is neither a fool nor a lunatic, and he asks you to believe him. He will be hanged within weeks, and he means to set down what he has lived.
His first claim is that every child remembers other times and places. He points to the dreams of falling and flying that haunt small children. Dreams are built from experience, he says, so the experience must come from somewhere.
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Which edition is right for me
- 15-minute summary
- The key ideas of the whole book in about 14 minutes. A good first look, or a refresher.
Details
- First published
- 1915
- Language
- Español
- Reading time
- 7 h 40 min
- Level
- Medium level
Cite this edition
London, Jack. The Jacket (The Star-Rover). Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-jacket-the-star-rover.
London, J. (2026). The jacket (The star-rover). Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-jacket-the-star-rover (Original work published 1915)
London, Jack. The Jacket (The Star-Rover). Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-jacket-the-star-rover.
@book{london2026jacket,
author = {London, Jack},
title = {The Jacket (The Star-Rover)},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-jacket-the-star-rover},
note = {First published 1915}
}
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What is The Jacket by Jack London about?
It follows Darrell Standing, a professor condemned to die, who tells how torture in a San Quentin straitjacket frees his mind to relive earlier lives. The tales range from old France to Korea, Jerusalem and a lonely island.
What does the jacket mean in The Jacket?
The jacket is a canvas straitjacket laced tightly around a prisoner as punishment. In the novel it is both a cruel instrument and the doorway through which Standing escapes into trances.
Why is it also called The Star-Rover?
The title names the narrator, who says he roams among the stars and across time while his body lies in the jacket. A star-rover is a wanderer through many lives and ages.
The author
Jack London
1876–1916 · American novelist and journalist
Jack London (1876–1916) was an American author, journalist and social activist. He was born in San Francisco and lived in California. He wrote novels, short stories and essays. His novels include The Call of the Wild (1903), The Sea-Wolf (1904), White Fang (1906) and Martin Eden (1909). He died in California.
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