NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER  AND INSPIRATION FOR THE NETFLIX LIMITED SERIES, HAILED BY ROLLING STONE  AS "A GREAT ONE."     "A single mother's personal, unflinching look at America's class divide, a description of the tightrope many families walk just to get by, and a reminder of the dignity of all work." -PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA, Obama's Summer Reading List At 28, Stephanie Land's dreams of attending a university and becoming a writer quickly dissolved when a summer fling turned into an unplanned pregnancy. Before long, she found herself a single mother, scraping by as a housekeeper to make ends meet. Maid is an emotionally raw, masterful account of Stephanie's years spent in service to upper middle class America as a "nameless ghost" who quietly shared in her clients' triumphs, tragedies, and deepest secrets. Driven to carve out a better life for her family, she cleaned by day and took online classes by night, writing relentlessly as she worked toward earning a college degree. She wrote of the true stories that weren't being told: of living on food stamps and WIC coupons, of government programs that barely provided housing, of aloof government employees who shamed her for receiving what little assistance she did. Above all else, she wrote about pursuing the myth of the American Dream from the poverty line, all the while slashing through deep-rooted stigmas of the working poor. Maid is Stephanie's story, but it's not hers alone. It is an inspiring testament to the courage, determination, and ultimate strength of the human spirit.   "A single mother's personal, unflinching look at America's class divide, a description of the tightrope many families walk just to get by, and a reminder of the dignity of all work." ― President Barack Obama, "Obama's 2019 Summer Reading List" President Barack Obama, Summer Reading List (2019) Forbes , Most Anticipated Books of the Year Glamour , Best Books of the Year Time , 11 New Books to Read This January Vulture , 8 New Books You Should Read This January Thrillist , All the Books We Can't Wait to Read in 2019 USA Today , 5 New Books Not to Miss Amazon, Best Books of the Month Detroit News , New Books to Look Forward to in 2019 The Missoulian , Best Books of the Month San Diego Entertainer , Books to Kick Off Your New Year People , Perfect for Your Book Club Boston.com, 20 Books to Look Out for in 2019 Hello Giggles , Best New Books to Read This Week Newsweek, Best Books of 2019 So Far CNN Travel , Books You Should Read This Summer Mental Floss , Summer Reading List BookTrib, B ooks That Will Make You Look Smart at the Beach! "More than any book in recent memory, Land nails the sheer terror that comes with being poor, the exhausting vigilance of knowing that any misstep or twist of fate will push you deeper into the hole."― The Boston Globe "Stephanie Lands memoir [ Maid ] is a bracing one."― The Atlantic "An eye-opening journey into the lives of the working poor." ― People, Perfect for Your Book Club "The particulars of Land's struggle are sobering, but it's the impression of precariousness that is most memorable."― The New Yorker "[Land's] book has the needed quality of reversing the direction of the gaze. Some people who employ domestic labor will read her account. Will they see themselves in her descriptions of her clients? Will they offer their employees the meager respect Land fantasizes about? Land survived the hardship of her years as a maid, her body exhausted and her brain filled with bleak arithmetic, to offer her testimony. It's worth listening to." ― New York Times Book Review "What this book does well is illuminate the struggles of poverty and single-motherhood, the unrelenting frustration of having no safety net, the ways in which our society is systemically designed to keep impoverished people mired in poverty, the indignity of poverty by way of unmovable bureaucracy, and people's lousy attitudes toward poor people... Land's prose is vivid and engaging... [A] tightly-focused, well-written memoir... an incredibly worthwhile read." ― Roxane Gay, New York Times bestselling author of Bad Feminist and Hunger: A Memoir "An eye-opening exploration of poverty in America."― Bustle "Marry the evocative first person narrative of Educated with the kind of social criticism seen in Nickel and Dimed and you'll get a sense of the remarkable book you hold in your hands. In Maid , Stephanie Land, a gifted storyteller with an eye for details you'll never forget, exposes what it's like to exist in America as a single mother, working herself sick cleaning our dirty toilets, one missed paycheck away from destitution. It's a perspective we seldom see represented firsthand-and one we so desperately need right now. Timely, urgent, and unforgettable, this is memoir at its very best."― Susannah Cahalan, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness "For readers