If you are someone who is getting paid minimum wage and just getting by with a $7.50 pay check a month, this invigorating novel is something you will be able to relate to. Barbra Ehrenreichs' novel, Nickel and Dimed, will take you into the hard life that people in America live every day. It all happens when she gives her boss the idea that they should do an article on minimum wage where a journalist goes undercover to uncover the 'real' truth. Her first stop is her home town of Key West Florida, where she becomes a recently divorced woman who has to live off a waitressing check.
Throughout the novel she becomes a cleaning lady in Maine and a Clerk at Wal-Mart in Minnesota each time evaluating her lifestyle and how she is getting by.
This isn't like other novels you read, this actually takes you into the lives of people who serve you food, clean your house, and sell you groceries. Her writing style has both controversial and informal topics allowing you to be introduced to a new genre of writing. It truly exposes the life of minimum wage workers attempting to get by in America with an honest and realistic fashion. She relates the stories she experiences as if she is catching up with old friends which makes it readable to a large audience. This novel is by far recommended to anyone who is middle class, upper class, or even the minimum wage class.