Bone of the Bone: Essays on America by a Daughter of the Working Class

“A must-read for today’s politics” (San Francisco Chronicle), the brilliant and provocative essays that established National Book Award finalist Sarah Smarsh as one of the most important commentators on America’s class problem are collected in one searing and insightful volume.

In Bone of the Bone, Sarah Smarsh brings her graceful storytelling and incisive critique to the challenges that define our times—class division, political fissures, gender inequality, environmental crisis, media bias, the rural-urban gulf. Smarsh, a journalist who grew up on a wheat farm in Kansas and was the first in her family to graduate from college, has long focused on cultural dissonance that many in her industry neglected until recently. Now, this thought-provoking collection of more than thirty of her highly relevant, previously published essays from the past decade (2013–2024)—ranging from personal narratives to news commentary—demonstrates a life and a career steeped in the issues that affect our collective future.

“A compassionate look at working-class poverty in America” (Time), Bone of the Bone is a singular work covering one of the most tumultuous decades in civic life. Timely, filled with perspective-shifting observations, and a pleasure to read, Sarah Smarsh’s essays—on topics as varied as the socioeconomic significance of dentistry, laws criminalizing poverty, fallacies of the “red vs. blue” political framework, working as a Hooters Girl, and much more—are an important addition to any discussion on contemporary America.

Sarah Smarsh is a journalist who has reported for The New York Times, Harper’s Magazine, The Guardian, and many other publications. Her first book, Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth, was a finalist for the National Book Award. Her second book, She Come By It Natural: Dolly Parton and the Women Who Lived Her Songs, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Smarsh is a frequent political commentator and speaker on socioeconomic class. She lives in Kansas.