Adelle Waldman Worked at a Big-Box Store to Write Her New Novel

When Adelle Waldman’s daughter was 21 months old, she would wake at 2:30 a.m. to nurse her, take a shower, then drive from her house in Rhinebeck to the big-box store across the Hudson, arriving early enough to stash her belongings in a locker and clock in before her shift from 4 to 8 a.m. (One time, she got a speeding ticket because she didn’t want to get written up for being late.) She would then join her team in spending the next four hours unloading a truck full of boxes, then dispersing its contents throughout the store. There was one 15-minute break halfway through the shift, and they would smoke cigarettes to help them stay awake. As we share American Spirits on the smoke-break bench outside the store one afternoon in late January, Waldman tells me everything else about the six months she spent at this job, the seed of her new novel, Help Wanted.

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