Nomadland

From the beet fields of North Dakota to the wilderness campgrounds of California to an Amazon warehouse in Texas people who once might have kicked back to enjoy their sunset years are hard at work. Underwater on mortgages or finding that Social Security comes up short they're hitting the road in astonishing numbers forming a new community of nomads: RV and van-dwelling migrant laborers or workampers. Building on her groundbreaking Harper's cover story The End of Retirement which brought attention to these formerly settled members of the middle class Jessica Bruder follows one such RVer Linda between physically taxing seasonal jobs and reunions of her new van-dweller family or vanily. Bruder tells a compelling eye-opening tale of both the economy's dark underbelly and the extraordinary resilience creativity and hope of these hardworking quintessential Americans - many of them single women - who have traded rootedness for the dream of a better life.