The Good Hand: A Memoir of Work, Brotherhood and Transformation in an American Boomtown (Hardback)

'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

'A thrill-read - There Will Be Blood made modern, and with added wit - The Good Hand is that rare literary treasure: all things, all at once. By mixing memoir with reportage and analysis, and telling his tale with rigor and joy, Smith gives us a hoot that also feels necessary' - Darin Strauss, author of Half a Life

'Novelistic, gritty reportage, very large in heart, with memorable characters on almost every page, The Good Hand will remind readers of the best of Orwell and Ehrenreich. A beautifully evoked, compelling memoir' - Philip Dray, author of There is Power in a Union

'A fine successor to Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London, translated to the epic scope and sweep of the prairie West ... Paints a larger portrait of the American worker's heroically tragic struggle for a thin slice of the pie' - John Strausbaugh, author of Victory City