The Good Hand. This item is unavailable.The Good Hand

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 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.

Michael Patrick F. Smith is a folksinger and playwright currently based in central Kentucky. His plays, including Woody Guthrie Dreams and Ain’t No Sin, have been staged in Baltimore and New York. As a musician, Smith has shared the stage with folk luminaries such as Ramblin’ Jack Elliott. He has also worked as a stage actor, junk hauler, furniture mover, legal assistant, book store clerk, contractor, driver, office temp, stagehand, set fabricator, bartender, and now writer. The Good Hand is his first book.