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The Good Hand: A Memoir of Work, Brotherhood, and Transformation in an American Boomtown
Maybe someday
38
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
59/100Critics
17/100Scholars
Author:
Michael Patrick F. Smith
Publisher:
Viking
Date:
February 16, 2021
A window into the world of working-class men set during the Bakken fracking boom in North Dakota.
What The Reviewers Say
Readers who come to The Good Hand previously uninterested in moving equipment — which is, well, everyone — will also find a memoir padded in front, bumpy in Smith’s self-portrayal as both a quiet watcher and an 'adrenaline freak' and short of the redemptive transformation sold by the book’s subtitle.
The Good Hand is in part a meditation on how central oil is to our lives, but it is just as much about the gruesome work of actually extracting that oil.
... ambitious.
... celebrating the lives of both Williston’s townspeople and the men who worked the derricks, laying out the relentlessly perilous nature of the trade they plied, centering its importance in serving the world’s energy demands, and tracking Smith’s transformation from city slicker to “trained-up” professional. Those notes also deliver a deceptively affecting snapshot of blue-collar America in a singular place and time..
