The good hand : work, brotherhood, and transformation in an American boomtown

The Resource The good hand : work, brotherhood, and transformation in an American boomtown

Label

The good hand : work, brotherhood, and transformation in an American boomtown

Title remainder

work, brotherhood, and transformation in an American boomtown

Statement of responsibility

Michael Patrick F. Smith

Language

eng

Summary

"A vivid window into the world of working class men and the value of hard labor, set during the Bakken fracking boom in North Dakota Shiftless and unsatisfied in his life, Michael Patrick Smith decided in his mid-thirties to seek out the hardest work he could find, to see if he could do it. He wanted to be a person, unlike his father, who knew how to work and get things done. He found himself in the oil fields of North Dakota during the Bakken fracking boom of 2013, where he spent a year as a swamper, assisting the truck drivers who hauled oil rigs from one site to another. The Good Hand is a saga of fear, danger, exhaustion, suffering, loneliness, and grit that explores the struggles and rewards of one of the most difficult jobs on the planet. In doing so, the story delves into the internal struggles of people who seem naturally drawn to hard work and hard luck--the rough-hewn, castoff, disposable men who populate boomtowns. As an oil field greenhorn, Smith finds the job is a continual battle; men are mocked and clobbered by equipment. But he comes to love the intensity and camaraderie, forming close bonds with a number of fellow workers, including Huck, an aw-shucks friendly young giant of a man who is constantly getting into trouble with the law, and "The Wildebeest," a truck driver in his fifties who initially torments Smith but later becomes instrumental in helping him to become "a good hand." Smith also examines his troubled relationship with his father--a trait that most of his coworkers seem to share--and draws fascinating parallels between his labor as an oil field hand and his previous careers in theatre and folk music. The Good Hand is ultimately a book about transformation--a classic American story about submitting to something elemental and larger than oneself. Smith discovers that the communities forged by hard work can awaken both the heart and the hands"--

Assigning source

Provided by publisher

Cataloging source

DLC

Dewey number

331.7/622338209784

Index

no index present

Literary form

non fiction

Target audience

adolescent

Context

Context of The good hand : work, brotherhood, and transformation in an American boomtown

Structured data from the Bibframe namespace is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License by East Baton Rouge Parish Library. Additional terms may apply to data associated with third party namespaces.

Context

Work of