The Good Hand: A Journey of Work, Brotherhood, and Transformation in a Booming American Town

Michael H. TidemannMichael H. Tidemann: One early morning in February 1979, I stood atop a water truck in the oil patch in North Dakota’s Theodore Roosevelt National Park North Unit, servicing a workover rig. Neon-green Northern Lights danced across the horizon. Later that morning, butte tops floated in a mauve morning fog sea. It was so beautiful I forgot it was 40 below.
That gives me a vague idea of what Michael Patrick F. Smith encountered in writing his memoir, The Good Hand: A Memoir of Work, Brotherhood, and Transformation in an American Boomtown.
Smith left the relative ease of Manhattan to find work in the oil patch near Williston, N.D. What he found was homelessness, astronomical rent, danger, near-starvation and, ultimately, work that made him into the sort of man he never thought he could become.
Smith threads his enthralling narrative with segments of the history of oil exploration and his own abusive childhood. Most interesting, though, is the huge culture shock he faced in finding big city life in a booming oil town on the North Dakota prairie.
“Prostitution rings, Mexican cartels, methamphetamine and heroic traffickers have descended upon northwest North Dakota. Like me they are following...

United States on Feb 25, 2023

Nancy Fluckey: I am still reading on this. It is 490 pages long so it will take you a while to read it. I ordered it because my husband‘s grandfather homesteaded out there and he kept the mineral rights to all of his property. I have been out there twice to visit and in three years time the town had doubled. We went around different places where he had lived and the building named after him. It is amazing what has happened to that town. The first time we went out there they were still doing the roads so I had to wait as they were laying down the roads.

United States on Dec 19, 2021

Carol L. Forrest-Gookool: "The Good Hand" is now my bible. I just read it twice through which I haven't done in the cases of my other "bibles." I am working on my own manuscript on WORK, with Mr. Smith's book as a framework as inspiration. Yes, I have Studs Terkel's tome, "Working," on my shelf, but I have only read a little of it. "The Good Hand" is a masterpiece--anyone can tell. And the thing about art so good, is that I ( as a little ol' nobody), do not to have to justify it's beauty! Triple whammy for me though, is that I imagined, as a Pennsyltuckian, working in ND, around 2008, and then ten years later I did work in Grand Forks, ND for two years. I say "triple" because "The Good Hand" has so much strength in form, so much strength in content and then thirdly for me--"been there," in more ways than one.

United States on Jul 13, 2021

Blacklace 50: This book astonished me, made me laugh, made me cry, and made me sweat with fear. A first-hand story of life and near-death in an oil boomtown, it's also a tale of personal and familial dysfunction. A raucous coming-of-age yarn, it's also an extended poem of working men and women in astoundingly tough conditions. It's beautifully written.I have lived in oil country for more than fifty years, but have never heard of read a more bone-real description of the work or the hands.

The sweating in fear part: my tiny ballerina/paramedic daughter was in the same region at the same time. I was fearful for her but really had no idea.

United States on Jun 21, 2021

GTO: This book is well written, impressively so for a first book. It would have gotten 5 stars if I had not been frustrated by the author's unwillingness to take a stand on just about anything. And I am just personally so fed up with large, confused, misogynistic, racist, white men with way too much testosterone and way too little kindness or integrity, that after a while, I really didn't care what happened to any of them. A pretty good read but I am guessing the next one will be great.

United States on Mar 02, 2021