The Christian Science Monitor

'Nomadland' chronicles Americans on the move with heaps of reportorial detail, narrative flair

In Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century, writer Jessica Bruder is pursuing a moving target: the new class of Americans who have traded in real estate for “wheel estate,” having lost their mortgages, their savings, and their dreams in the Great Recession or individual disasters, to become “workampers.” This tribe pulls into campgrounds, back roads, and parking lots, working temporary minimum-wage-variety jobs that sometimes come with a campsite. They live out of houses that move: fitted-out RVs, trailers, trucks, vans, even cars.

Bruder tackles her task with heaps of reportorial

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