Lydia Paar joined the American workforce at fourteen, holding nearly thirty different jobs from twenty-five homes across eight states into adulthood. These essays explore her attempts to evade or transform the lower-middle-class American experience across varied cityscapes, towns, and in-between places; through the hip streets of Portland and desolate deserts, in army basic training and on cross-country bus trips, inside eerie St. Louis funeral homes and more, Paar explores how we work, how we alternately imprison and free ourselves with our efforts, and how what we try to transform so often ultimately transforms us.
