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Start giftingNomadland
Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century
Narrator
Karen White
This audiobook uses AI narration.
We’re taking steps to make sure AI narration is transparent.
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Length
9 hours 57 minutes
Language
English
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.
Jessica Bruder is the author of Nomadland, which was named a New York Times Notable Book and Editors' Choice and a finalist for the J. Anthony Lukas Prize and the Helen Bernstein Book Award. It was adapted for a film starring Frances McDormand and David Straithairn, due for release from Fox Searchlight in 2020. She is also the author of Burning Book and writes for WIRED, New York Magazine, Harper's Magazine, the Nation, the New York Times, and the Guardian, among other publications. She is a New America fellow, has held residencies at Bellagio, MacDowell, and Yaddo, and teaches at Columbia Journalism School. She lives in Brooklyn with a spaniel named Max and more plants than you can shake a leafy stick at.
Karen White has been narrating audiobooks since 1999, with more than two hundred to her credit. Honored to be included in AudioFile's Best Voices and Speaking of Audiobooks's Best Romance Audio 2012 and 2013, she is also an Audie Award finalist and has earned multiple AudioFile Earphones Awards and Library Journal starred reviews. She currently lives with her family in Wilmington, North Carolina. Publishers Weekly says of Karen's narration of Nothing to Envy by Barbara Demick, "Karen White delivers a stunning reading, her character interpretations are confident and well-rounded, and she forges a strong bond with the audience." Speaking of Audiobooks says, "Karen is one of my auto-buy narrators-if I think a book may interest me, her narration will sway me to give it a try."
