Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century

Bruder introduces the town of Quartzsite, a town with a population of about 4,000 people in Arizona. Each winter, it becomes destination for retirees and senior citizens seeking a respite from cold weather by moving for part of the year down south. Nomads call it “The Gathering Place” (116).

During the RTR, the town attracts thousands of people living in their RVs, campers, vans, and other mobile homes. Many stay in one of the town’s seventy RV parks (there are only three motels), while others gather and park on public lands just outside of town. Businesses and restaurants in Quartzsite cater to these nomads, and many vendors travel to set up shop. Bruder characterizes the scene as “a sprawling tailgate party” while National Geographic once called it “America’s Largest Parking Lot” (122). It is also called “Spring Break for Seniors” and “Poor Man’s Palm Springs” (122). Quartzsite is estimated to attract nearly forty thousand visitors each winter.

Bruder is first told about Quartzsite by Iris Goldenberg, a sixty-two-year-old CamperForce worker she interviews who lives in a trailer with her pet birds. She admires “the blurring of class lines” (123) that happens at Quartzsite as people from all walks of life gather each year.

Some RV group gatherings allow like-minded people to join together, grouped by age or interest. Bruder describes coming across them as similar to “stumbling on suburban tract housing—with its cookie-cutter neighborhoods—in the middle of nowhere” (125).

Quartzsite originated in 1856 when white settlers set up the small town of Fort Tyson in order to engage in warfare against the Mojave Indians. Fort Tyson would later evolve into a seedy stagecoach stopover and eventually a mining town (hence the name “Quartzsite”). Despite the town’s oddball reputation and declining population over the decades, by the mid-twentieth century the gem, mineral, and flea-market economy had taken over.

Bruder chats with Cherie, a quirky local swamp meet owner originally from Minnesota whose scrappiness and resourcefulness are the result of her own struggles to make ends meet back in Minnesota. She tells Bruder she thinks she is crazy for wanting to live in New York City, preferring instead to live closer to nature.

Quartzsite finds itself within the American boom-and-bust economic cycle. Bruder notices boarded-up businesses in town. The number of visitors every year to RTR is declining for unknown reasons. Many RVers are struggling financially and don’t spend their money as freely as they might have in the past. Bruder is told, “transient old folks flock to Quartzsite because it’s a ‘low-incoming retirement town and ‘a cheap place to hide’” from worried family members and freezing cold weather (130). She visits church dinners and the town food pantry to see how the town helps feed many nomads who are experiencing hardship.

Bruder returns to Quartzsite three winters in a row in order to see what the town is like during the winter for herself. Each winter, she meets up with Barb and Chuck Stout, CamperForce laborers who journey there each year. During their third winter, they are “veterans,” and she watches them “[perform] a rite of joyful catharsis: burning their old bankruptcy papers” (134).

Linda heads to Quartzsite for RTR, stopping along the way in Needles, California, a town made famous by John Steinbeck’s novel The Grapes of Wrath. Craving company and a larger community after the soul-crushing work at Amazon, Linda is excited.

Bob Wells, the organizer of the gathering, does not make a profit off of it. His generous spirit attracts similarly generous people, including cosmetologists, mechanics, bakers, bartenders, and skilled people of all kinds to share their knowledge and services with their fellow nomads.

Linda is thrilled to learn new skills and attends seminars on all kinds of subjects pertaining to RV and nomad living each morning. One of these seminars focuses on stealth parking and camping tips, as well as camouflaging oneself to avoid the eyes of police. Bob hosts a seminar on budgeting, and Linda learns about higher paying jobs that don’t involve working at CamperForce.

During this inaugural trip, Linda meets LaVonne Ellis, a sixty-seven-year-old writer who once worked in broadcast and radio journalism. After “aging out” in her fifties, she tries to find piecemeal work but struggles to make ends meet. She decided to try van dwelling, blogging about her experience and finding a community with “a ragtag bunch of misfits who surrounded me with love and acceptance.” She continues:

By misfits I don’t mean losers and dropouts. These were smart, compassionate, hardworking Americans whose scales had been lifted from their eyes […] they had come to the conclusion that [the American Dream] was all nothing but a big con” (150).

LaVonne is initially skeptical of Bruder, fearing that she will portray the nomads as undesirable vagabonds despite Bruder’s assertion that that is not her intention.

Many labor recruiters also attend RTR, trying to attract nomads as seasonal workers for Amazon’s CamperForce as well as campground hosting, amusement park staffing, and sugar beet harvesting. As RTR winds down, the nomads begin to disperse. Linda and LaVonne decide to work as campground hosts together soon. First, Linda wants to visit the desert in Cochise County, Arizona, where she hopes to buy land for her Earthship.

A few months later, Linda works as a host at Sherwin Creek Campground for the spring season. She tells Bruder that she is happy and enjoying herself. Despite her lingering wrist issues from her time at CamperForce, she is considering returning again in the fall. Linda reminds Bruder, “The happiest I’ve been is when I’ve had very little” (162).

Bruder opens with a discussion of some of the research she did while interviewing workampers, specifically regarding media coverage of the movement. Many portray workamping as a quirky or fun thrill rather a choice made out of financial necessity. However, many workampers Bruder meets talk about those who may need an “attitude adjustment” in order to think positively while living their lifestyle.

Positive thinking is an American phenomenon and coping mechanism during hard times. Yet Bruder doesn't see workampers as merely being in denial. She notes, “It’s possible to undergo hardships that shake our will to endure, while also finding happiness in shared moments, such as sitting around a bonfire with fellow workampers under a vast starry sky” (165). In order to better understand the nuances of workamper life, Bruder decides she too must try out van dwelling for herself so she can better relate to her subjects. She scours Craigslist and finds a van listed that needs some work, which she purchases. In the tradition of pun-based names that other workampers had for their van, she christens her van “Halen” (an allusion to the rock band Van Halen).

She and her best friend Dale pick up the van and get to work restoring it so that it can be habitable. Bruder finds the van difficult to drive at first, but eventually begins to get the hang of it. They clean the van and install solar panels as well as a power inverter for charging electronics. Halen would be her constant companion during the next two years of interviewing and researching Nomadland while driving through the United States and Mexico.

Bruder quickly realizes that despite her many interviews with subjects for her book, she is not actually prepared to live in a van full-time. She encounters issues as she drives around, ranging from getting stuck in a desert to fleeing tornado warnings to being unable to fill a prescription without giving a home address. She dubs these experiences the “background music” (169) of her research. Eventually, she will drive Halen up a mountain to meet Linda during a campground hosting job.

However, Bruder also visits Linda while she is staying with her daughter in San Clemente. Bruder sleeps in Halen overnight, finding herself growing increasingly nervous and paranoid of lights and sounds outside of the van. Over the next few days, Linda graciously helps Bruder get used to van life, and gives her directions on how to park.

Eventually Bruder heads to Quartzsite to “boondock” (or live off RV park utilities) for a few months, with the intention of staying for RTR. She receives a potluck invite from a boondocking expert named Charlene Swankie, also known as Swankie Wheels. Bruder is grateful for the opportunity to potentially learn some of the ropes from her.

When she arrives at Swankie’s camp just south of Quartzsite, she meets 27-year-old novice van dweller Vincent Mosemann, who is also learning from Swankie. Mosemann had been living in Montana with his mother until two months prior. Burdened by student loan debt from his unfinished bachelor’s degree, Vincent bought his mom’s van and converted it to a living space, naming the vehicle “Tillie.” Although they both have very different personalities, Swankie and Mosemann have been helping one another out; Swanky lets Mosemann, who is a trans man, use her post office box as a mailing address to receive his hormone therapy.

Bruder stays the night with them and meets 47-year-old couple Kat and Mike Valentino who live in a van with their nine-year-old son and a pet ferret. After Kat was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, she and Mike, were in need of cash. As they grew interested in van dwelling and tired of living in cheap, unsafe motels, the couple decide to buy a van and convert it into a mobile dwelling. Their son is being homeschooled out of the van.

On a particularly cold night, Bruder, Swankie, Mosemann, and the Valentinos all struggle to heat their vans. Alex’s birthday arrives a few days later and Kat throws him an ice cream party. Swankie tells Bruder that once you stay in her camp for more than half a day, you’re a part of her family. Bruder notes that while driving with the group, she feels like a member of an outlaw posse.

When Bruder’s second annual RTR occurs, she begins to notice what she calls “the unbearable whiteness of vanning” (178). Most vans at RTR and in the van dwelling community are painted white, which means they are often stereotyped as potential kidnappers or perverts while out on the road.

But this “whiteness” also refers to the majority of van dwellers being white people, with only a handful of exceptions. Bruder theorizes that people of color may be less likely to want to van dwell because they also are less likely to go camping (which is stereotyped as a white activity). Moreover, living outside without fear of danger—from police and others—is a privileged position that is perhaps unavailable to people of color. While Bruder does not observe overt racism herself, she does speak to workampers who have overheard others using racial slurs. Given racist violence, profiling, and police brutality, Bruder says it ought not to be a surprise that van dwelling simply may not feel like a safe option for people of color. She notes instances in which her white privilege likely helped her to stay safe and out of harm’s way while she was driving and living out of Halen.

Bruder stores Halen and flies back to her home in New York City. Despite the small size of her apartment, she is amazed at how much room she has and notes that her van had begun to feel womb-like. Although she enjoys returning to certain comforts from her city life, she misses the nomads and living on the road more than she expected.

While attending RTR, Bruder meets labor recruiters looking for seasonal workers to harvest sugar beets. She is confused by this idea, citing the physically demanding toll of farm work specifically on aging bodies. She asks around Quartzsite, hearing about sugar beet harvesting experiences from others. Bruder decides on a whim to apply to work the sugar beet harvest, and months later, her application is accepted.

Bruder arrives for the sugar beet harvest in late September, located in Drayton Yard, North Dakota. She is assigned to work 12-hour shifts as a “piler” inside a large open warehouse, shoveling spilled beets back on to a conveyor belt and keeping the machines clean. The work is difficult, with beets whizzing by at high speeds, overwhelming smells, physically exhausting tasks. As Bruder describes it, “It felt like catching bowling balls in a pillowcase” (187). Despite being in her late thirties, Bruder finds herself completely exhausted and sore all over, with old injuries resurfacing. Reluctantly, Bruder decides to quit, fearing the dangerous working conditions and recognizing that participating when she knows she will go home to write about it still would not compare to the lived experience of the workampers.

Bruder also submitted an application for CamperForce while visiting recruiters at RTR. Right after quitting her job as a laborer in North Dakota, she had smoked a joint. When Bruder is notified she’s been accepted as a CamperForce laborer at the Haslet, Texas warehouse, she is also informed she'll need to take a drug test. Unable to pass it by herself, she smuggles in pee for her drug test so she can be cleared to work.

Bruder attends orientation, where she learns that CamperForce employees are known for their “can-do, Eisenhower-era work ethic that rubbed off on younger, less experienced laborers” (191). Despite this, she does not notice younger workers looking any more motivated in the coming days. Bruder is assigned to Inventory Control Quality Assurance, scanning items all day long within the warehouse.

She runs in to Barb and Chuck Stout, whom she had met in Quartzsite. Chuck has an accident and hits his head, but medical professionals say he is not concussed so he is cleared to walk the 15 or more miles per day necessary to work at Haslet. Bruder also sees Kivas, or robots, in action at the warehouse, although they are often more harmful than helpful. The warehouse is run based on “takt,” a business term for the amount of time necessary to process one product. Bruder struggles with the dissonance between the cheerful start of shift meetings and the monotony and physical exertion that came with the rest of her shift.

Bruder works at the Haslet FC for a week. She considers making a scene as she quits by running into the Kiva’s pre-determined work “field” and messing up their instructions. However, fearful of losing her carefully concealed notes, Bruder decides against it.