Anthropology of an American Girl is a semi-autobiographical novel. It is the story of a young woman and her culture that strives for a measure of narrative depth, detail, and objectivity. It follows its protagonist, Eveline Auerbach, as she moves through a pre-digital American landscape during the 1970s and 1980s. In the most basic respect, it is a coming of age story that prescribes a return to simplicity as the most rational and ethical response to the chaos and confusion of upward mobility.