Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century

by Jessica Bruder

The writer David A. Thornburg, whose parents lived for fifteen years in a house trailer, saw in their push for self-determination a quiet revolution. In a poetic history called Galloping Bungalows, he wrote: And so, right out of the heart of the Great Depression a new dream was born: the dream of escape. Escape from snow and ice, from high taxes and rent, from an economic system that nobody trusted anymore. Escape! For the winter, for the weekend, for the rest of your life. All it took was a little courage and a $600 house trailer. He went on to elaborate: The Great Depression reduced millions of Americans of every age and class to the powerless condition of adolescents . . . But a few people saw opportunity amid all this chaos—opportunity to rebuild their world, their values along more personal and perhaps less vulnerable lines. Among these rebuilders were the pioneer trailerites of the 30s, over a million strong, idealists and iconoclasts, thoughtful and deliberate drop-outs. People who chose not to wait for government or big business to save them, who chose to take their economic destiny into their own hands. People who elected to slip the middle-class noose and form for themselves a wholly new subculture—a life just a little freer, a little more autonomous and less anxiety-ridden, a little closer to their hearts’ desires.