"Lydia Paar joined the American workforce at age 14, holding a wide variety of jobs (27, at last count) between then and now, across 25 different homes in eight states. The essays in this collection explore her attempts to evade or transform the lower-middle class American experience across various cityscapes, towns, deserts and in-between places (jails, cross-country bus rides, and U.S. army basic training). Each essay interrogates the interior emotional work that accompanies such grappling: labors of love and friendship, of learning, motion, maintenance and of finding faith in potential for positive change. Across a range of interior and exterior landscapes, Paar meditates on subcultures, agendas, violences, alliances, and on the natural world our human endeavors intersect: on how what we try to transform so often transforms us"--