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

(Hardback)

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A TIMES AND SUNDAY TIMES BEST BOOK OF 2021

Thrillingly and wrenchingly funny like EducatedandHillbilly 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.

Reviews

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 Smith writes movingly of his chaotic childhood the tragedies slowly drip out There have been predictable comparisons to other recent hardship autobiographies JD Vances Hillbilly Elegy and Tara Westovers Educated but Smiths story, blessedly, comes with more (crude) humour Undeniably powerful
Sunday Times

Thrillingly and wrenchingly funny like EducatedandHillbilly Elegy,The Good Handis 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 ofAlthoughof Course You End Up Becoming Yourself

Smith guides us through a long muddy year in North Dakotas oil boom Its 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 Dont 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 Smiths 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 Bloodmade modern, and with added wit The Good Handis that rare literary treasure: all things, all at once. By mixing memoir with reportage and analysis, andtelling his tale with rigor and joy,Smith gives us ahoot that also feels necessary
Darin Strauss, author ofHalf a Life

Author Bio

Michael Patrick Flanagan Smith is a writer and actor based in Brooklyn. His play about the iconoclast folksinger, Woody Guthrie Dreams, premiered at Theater for the New City in September of 2011. The Good Hand is his first book.