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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Narrated by:
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Michael Patrick Smith
About this listen
A TIMES AND SUNDAY TIMES BEST BOOK OF 2021
‘After reading The Good Hand you may reassess whether you have ever truly done a hard day’s work in your life … This lyrical and engrossing memoir is an extraordinary tale … Undeniably powerful’
SUNDAY TIMES
The must-read memoir of 2021.
Michael Patrick Smith grew up in a ramshackle farmhouse where his father beat the walls and threw dinner plates. As a restless young man left unmoored by the crashing economy, Smith cut a path to North Dakota to rent a mattress on a flophouse floor. Sleeping boot to beard with the other rough-edged men looking to earn a cent drilling for oil, Smith wanted the work to burn him clean – of his violent upbringing, his demons, his disjointed, doomed relationships. He did not expect, among these quick-fisted, foul-mouthed hands, to find a community.
The Good Hand is a memoir of danger and exhaustion, of suffering, loneliness and grit, of masculinity and of learning how to reconcile yourself to yourself.
©2021 Michael Patrick Smith (P)2021 HarperCollins Publishers LimitedCritic reviews
"Thrillingly and wrenchingly funny...like Educated and Hillbilly Elegy, The Good Hand is one of those brilliant close-ups that suddenly flips to become a wide shot of the American moment. An engrossing combination of participation, reportage, self-discovery and witness." (David Lipsky, author of Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself)
"Smith guides us through a long muddy year in North Dakota’s oil boom... It’s a surprisingly tender account of a man who is searching for salvation - from the sins of his family, from the drunken and drugged-up sins of a world broken by corporations - while trying desperately to find himself through work." (Robert Sullivan, author of The Thoreau You Don’t Know)
"A sincere and colourful account of down-and-out men trying to make it and maybe grow up in the eternal dreary tailgate party and crushing dangerous toil of the fracking boom. As one of Smith’s mentors tells him, 'now you know why gas is so expensive'." (William T. Vollmann, author of The Lucky Star)