The oil sands are... complicated. I graduated high school in Alberta about when Beaton left the industry, and it was booming. If you didn't have a plan, or prospects, or just wanted to make some cash, it was almost assumed you'd end up in Fort Mac. The number of people who talked about getting an H2S cert was almost weird.

What people glossed over, but we all knew, was that it was a shit job. The people who actively wanted the oil sands around, who wanted jobs there, were practically nonexistent. It was an environment where you could make a lot of money but you had to be wary of the drugs, the racism and sexism, the generally unpleasant people, the dubious work environment, and the general dangers of the job.

But it was a livelihood for a lot of people. Decent people, even if those people were different for being there, changed for being there. Beaton highlights exactly how the work changes people, what the human cost of the oil sands are, and she does so while highlighting the humanity of the workers.

But she also highlights the inhumanity of them. She experiences a lot of horrible things that are sadly normal in the camps. It's not a job for women—not because they can't do it, but because it's unsafe for them in a wholly different way. And even when it isn't outright unsafe, the wildly male-dominated population separated from the rest of their lives just makes them weird and sexist in all sorts of big and small ways. 

This is just about a perfect memoir on the oil sands. It shows why people go there, and why people shouldn't want to go there. How it helps people, and also how it breaks them.