Bob and Anita Apperley are a married couple who sign up to work as a part of CamperForce. They tell Bruder their story about their home foreclosure, which stands in for the many nomads who went through foreclosure or bankruptcy before becoming van dwellers.

Bruder is the author of Nomadland, and an occasional first-person narrator. She is an award-winning journalist specializing in reporting on the economy, labor, and sub-cultures, as well as a professor of journalism at Columbia University.

Over the course of three years, she travels from her home in Brooklyn, New York to follow her reporting subjects, particularly Linda May, with whom she cultivates an intimate friendship. In order to better understand the plight of the nomads she is writing about, she buys and renovates a van, visits Quartzsite and RTR, and even takes on the same seasonal work her subjects work.

Her perspective as someone who is entering an unknown and oft-overlooked community with a very different lifestyle is a helpful stand-in for the reader. In addition, her perspective adds levity to what can be an otherwise dark and somber text, especially as she stumbles through equipping her van and working at an Amazon FC.