The New York Times Book Review - Arlie Russell Hochschild
In this stunning and beautifully written book, Bruder…describes her journey with Linda and her other interviews conducted in five states over three years…[a] brilliant and haunting book…
The New York Times - Parul Sehgal
…an important…work influenced by such classics of immersion journalism as Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed…Bruder is a poised and graceful writer.
From the Publisher
"A remarkable book of immersive reporting.…Bruder is an acute and compassionate observer."— Margaret Talbot The New Yorker
"This is an important book.… A calmly stated chronicle of devastation. But told as story after story, it is also a riveting collection of tales about irresistible people—quirky, valiant people who deserve respect and a decent life."— Louise Erdrich, author of Future Home of the Living God and The Round House
"Bruder is a poised and graceful writer."— Parul Sehgal New York Times
"[A] devastating, revelatory book."— Timothy R. Smith Washington Post
"A first-rate piece of immersive journalism."— San Francisco Chronicle
"Stirring reportage."— O Magazine
"At once wonderfully humane and deeply troubling, the book offers an eye-opening tour of the increasingly unequal, unstable, and insecure future our country is racing toward."— Astra Taylor The Nation
"Some readers will come because they’re enamored of road narratives, but Bruder’s study should be of interest to anyone who cares about the future of work, community, and retirement."— Peter C. Baker Pacific Standard
"Important, eye-opening journalism."— Kim Ode Minneapolis Star Tribune
"Bruder tells [this] story with gripping insight, detail and candor. In the hands of a fine writer, this is a terrific profile of a subculture that gets little attention, or is treated by the media as a quirky hobby, rather than a survival strategy."— Peter Simon Buffalo News
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2017-05-09
Journalist Bruder (Burning Book: A Visual History of Burning Man, 2007) expands her remarkable cover story for Harper's into a book about low-income Americans eking out a living while driving from locale to locale for seasonal employment.From the beginning of her immersion into a mostly invisible subculture, the author makes it clear that the nomads—many of them senior citizens—refuse to think of themselves as "homeless." Rather, they refer to themselves as "houseless," as in no longer burdened by mortgage payments, repairs, and other drawbacks, and they discuss "wheel estate" instead of real estate. Most of them did not lose their houses willingly, having fallen victim to mortgage fraud, job loss, health care debt, divorce, alcoholism, or some combination of those and additional factors. As a result, they sleep in their cars or trucks or cheaply purchased campers and try to make the best of the situation. At a distance, the nomads might be mistaken for RV owners traveling the country for pleasure, but that is not the case. Bruder traveled with some of the houseless for years while researching and writing her book. She builds the narrative around one especially accommodating nomad, senior citizen Linda May, who is fully fleshed on the page thanks to the author's deep reporting. May and her fellow travelers tend to find physically demanding, low-wage jobs at Amazon.com warehouses that aggressively seek seasonal workers or at campgrounds, sugar beet harvest sites, and the like. The often desperate nomads build communities wherever they land, offering tips for overcoming common troubles, sharing food, repairing vehicles, counseling each other through bouts of depression, and establishing a grapevine about potential employers. Though very little about Bruder's excellent journalistic account offers hope for the future, an ersatz hope radiates from within Nomadland: that hard work and persistence will lead to more stable situations. Engaging, highly relevant immersion journalism.
2018 J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize, Short-listed
2021 Ryszard Kapuscinski International Award for Literary Reporting, Winner
