All branches of the Burlington County Library will be closed on Friday, March 29 in observance of Good Friday and on Sunday, March 31 in observance of Easter Sunday. See all holidays & closings.
The Open Book Club (In-Person & Virtual)
Come join the Open Book Club! This month, we're reading Nomadland by Jessica Bruder.
From the beet fields of North Dakota to the National Forest campgrounds of California to Amazon’s CamperForce program in Texas, employers have discovered a new, low-cost labor pool, made up largely of transient older Americans. Finding that Social Security comes up short, often underwater on mortgages, these invisible casualties of the Great Recession have taken to the road by the tens of thousands in late-model RVs, travel trailers, and vans, forming a growing community of nomads: migrant laborers who call themselves “workampers.”
In a secondhand van she names “Halen,” Jessica Bruder hits the road to get to know her subjects more intimately. Accompanying her irrepressible protagonist, Linda May, and others from campground toilet cleaning to warehouse product scanning to desert reunions, then moving on to the dangerous work of beet harvesting, Bruder tells a compelling, eye-opening tale of the dark underbelly of the American economy—one that foreshadows the precarious future that may await many more of us. At the same time, she celebrates the exceptional resilience and creativity of these quintessential Americans who have given up ordinary rootedness to survive. Like Linda May, who dreams of finding land on which to build her own sustainable “Earthship” home, they have not given up hope.
- Registration is required, whether you want to attend in-person or virtually.
- This event will be hosted in-person at the Cinnaminson Library and virtually on Zoom. You can choose whether to attend in-person or virtually.
- Registrants will receive an email invitation with the Zoom link the day of the event. (If you plan to attend in-person, you can discard this email.