Michael Patrick F. Smith - The Good Hand: A Memoir of Work, Brotherhood, and Transformation in an American Boomtown

VIKING

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Copyright 2021 by Michael Patrick F. Smith

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Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint the following:

Excerpt from Love Poem to a Stripper from You Get So Alone at TimesThat It Just Makes Senseby Charles Bukowski. Copyright 1986 by Linda Lee Bukowski. Used by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.

Excerpt from Talking Hard Work. Words and Music by Woody Guthrie. Copyright Woody Guthrie Publications, Inc. (BMI)

Excerpt from Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way. Words and Music by Waylon Jennings. Copyright 1975 UNIVERSALSONGS OF POLYGRAM INTERNATIONAL, INC. Copyright Renewed. All rights reserved. Used by permission. Reprinted by permission of Hal Leonard LLC.

Illustration on Jacob Thomas.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Names: Smith, Michael Patrick F., author.

Title: The good hand : a memoir of work, brotherhood, and transformation in an American boomtown / Michael Patrick F. Smith.

Description: [New York]: Viking, [2021]

Identifiers: LCCN 2020022355 (print) | LCCN 2020022356 (ebook) | ISBN 9781984881519 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781984881526 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Oil industry workersNorth Dakota. | Hydraulic

fracturingNorth Dakota. | Working class menNorth Dakota.

Classification: LCC HD8039.O52 U667 2021 (print) | LCC HD8039.O52 (ebook) | DDC 331.7/622338209784dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020022355

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020022356

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For my brothers and sisters:

Ryan, Matthew, Megan, Kate, and Shanon

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;

It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil

Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?

Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;

And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;

And wears mans smudge and shares mans smell: the soil

Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

Gerard Manley Hopkins