Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth

Finalist for the National Book Award for Nonfiction.

An eye-opening, topical, and moving memoir of one woman's experience of working-class poverty in America.

Born a fifth-generation Kansas wheat farmer on her paternal side and the product of generations of teenage mothers on her maternal side, Sarah Smarsh grew up in a family of labourers trapped in a cycle of poverty. She learned about hard work, and also absorbed painful lessons about economic inequality, eventually coming to understand the powerful forces that have blighted the lives of poor and working-class Americans living in the heartland.

By sharing the story of her life and the lives of the people she loves, Smarsh challenges us to consider modern-day America from a different perspective. Combining memoir with powerful analysis and cultural commentary, Heartland is a searing, uncompromising look at class, identity, and the perils of having less in a country known for its excess.

Sarah Smarsh has covered socioeconomic class, politics, and public policy for  The Guardian, The New York Times, NewYorker.com, Harpers.org, The Texas Observer, and many others. She recently was a Joan Shorenstein Fellow at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. A former professor of nonfiction writing, Smarsh is a frequent speaker on economic inequality and related media narratives. She lives in Kansas.  Heartland  is her first book.