The Good Hand: A Memoir of Work, Brotherhood and Transformation in an American Boomtown
English
By (author): Michael Patrick F. Smith
A TIMES AND SUNDAY TIMES BEST BOOK OF 2021
Thrillingly and wrenchingly funny like Educated and Hillbilly Elegy
DAVID LIPSKY
After reading The Good Hand you may reassess whether you have ever truly done a hard days 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.
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