The Good Hand
A Memoir of Work, Brotherhood, and Transformation in an American Boomtown
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The Good Hand
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Narrado por:
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Michael Patrick F. Smith
Sobre este áudio
"Remarkable...this is the book that Hillbilly Elegy should have been." (Kirkus Reviews)
A vivid window into the world of working-class men set during the Bakken fracking boom in North Dakota.
Like thousands of restless men left unmoored in the wake of the 2008 economic crash, Michael Patrick Smith arrived in the fracking boomtown of Williston, North Dakota, five years later homeless, unemployed, and desperate for a job. Renting a mattress on a dirty flophouse floor, he slept boot to beard with migrant men who came from all across America and as far away as Jamaica, Africa, and the Philippines. They ate together, drank together, argued like crows, and searched for jobs they couldn't get back home. Smith's goal was to find the hardest work he could do - to find out if he could do it. He hired on in the oil patch where he toiled 14-hour shifts from summer's 100-degree dog days to deep into winter's bracing whiteouts, all the while wrestling with the demons of a turbulent past, his broken relationships with women, and the haunted memories of a family riven by violence.
The Good Hand is a saga of fear, danger, exhaustion, suffering, loneliness, and grit that explores the struggles of America's marginalized boomtown workers - the rough-hewn, castoff, seemingly disposable men who do an indispensable job that few would exalt: oil field hands who, in the age of climate change, put the gas in our tanks and the food in our homes. Smith, who had pursued theater and played guitar in New York, observes this world with a critical eye; yet he comes to love his coworkers, forming close bonds with Huck, a goofy giant of a young man whose lead foot and quick fists get him into trouble with the law, and The Wildebeest, a foul-mouthed, dip-spitting truck driver who torments him but also trains him up and helps Smith "make a hand".
The Good Hand is ultimately a book about transformation - a classic American story of one man's attempt to burn himself clean through hard work, to reconcile himself to himself, to find community, and to become whole.
This audiobook edition includes an original score and seven songs performed by The Good Hand.
©2021 Michael Patrick F. Smith (P)2021 Penguin AudioResumo da Crítica
“Smith brings an alchemic talent to describing physical labor.... With a playwright’s talent for dialogue, storytelling in miniature and staying out of the way, he writes dozens of scenes of men moving, joking and endlessly talking...his writing keeps people alive in their histories, talents, humor and mistakes...[bringing] perspective, on how people, including Smith, can sometimes rise above their worst selves through unglamorous, demanding, difficult work...a book that should be read.” (The New York Times Book Review)
“[A] sprawling, heart-smeared-on-the-page howl of rage and pain. The Good Hand is a rambling honky-tonk of a book, with the soul of a songwriter and the ache of a poor White boy who grew up rough. It is big and it is pretty and it is amazing.” (Los Angeles Times)
“The Good Hand ’s scenes in ‘the patch’ are beautiful, funny, and harrowing, constructed with metal hooks, workplace lingo, poetic profanity, and the author’s palpable fear.... As someone whose immediate family bears the scars of physical labor in another Great Plains state, and who rarely sees her native class convincingly portrayed, I relished these anecdotes and the validation they provide.” (Sarah Smarsh, The Atlantic)