Practicing Happiness: A Memoir of Van Life

She was a single mom whose son was grown and gone; living in Florida in a house she adored but whose upkeep and maintenance were a constant churn of worry; and she was a little less than gainfully employed.

Nomadland hadn’t been published yet, and it would be another year before she learned about the #vanlife movement from The New Yorker. Sarah didn’t even have an Instagram account.

But her life felt stagnant. She didn’t know what she wanted, but she knew she needed something different.

Based on her blog posts and journals, interspersed with some present-day advice on van living and happiness, this is the story of what she did, how she did it, and what she learned along the way.