Great American Outpost
Dreamers, Mavericks, and the Making of an Oil Frontier
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- $17.99
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
A surreal, lyrical work of narrative nonfiction that portrays how the largest domestic oil discovery in half a century transformed a forgotten corner of the American West into a crucible of breakneck capitalism.
As North Dakota became the nation's second-largest oil producer, Maya Rao set out in steel-toe boots to join a wave of drifters, dreamers, entrepreneurs, and criminals. With an eye for the dark, absurd, and humorous, Rao fearlessly immersed herself in their world to chronicle this modern-day gold rush, from its heady beginnings to OPEC's price war against the US oil industry. She rode shotgun with a surfer-turned-truck driver braving toxic fumes and dangerous roads, dined with businessmen disgraced during the financial crisis, and reported on everyone in between -- including an ex-con YouTube celebrity, a trophy wife mired in scandal, and a hard-drinking British Ponzi schemer--in a social scene so rife with intrigue that one investor called the oilfield Peyton Place on steroids.
As the boom receded, a culture of greed and recklessness left troubling consequences for investors and longtime residents. Empty trailers and idle oil equipment littered the fields like abandoned farmsteads, leaving the pioneers who built this unlikely civilization to reckon with their legacy. Part Barbara Ehrenreich, part Upton Sinclair, Great American Outpost is a sobering exploration of twenty-first-century America that reads like a frontier novel.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Minneapolis Star-Tribune journalist Rao's debut paints a vivid picture of the rapid development that accompanied the recent oil boom in North Dakota. Beginning in 2012, Rao immersed herself in the Bakken oil boomtown, which she likens to a 21st-century gold rush as "hordes of people flock to this untrammeled terrain to make their fortune." Her portrait focuses largely on the lives of the people she encountered there: the "pioneers, outcasts... dreamers, do-gooders, failures, drifters, deadbeats" who were drawn to the site from all around the country for its promise of economic prosperity. Rao introduces readers to Danny Witt, a surfer from North Carolina who trucked water and crude along desolate highways to and from the oil fields. She writes of the monotony of his task much of it "was stop and go, idling and stalling" and the peculiar rhythms of time spent largely on the road. She also follows Marcus Jundt, a restaurateur who financed four restaurants in town, including the Williston Brewing Company, to serve newcomers and offer respite for the laborers working at the Bakken rigs. Rao poignantly captures the change in atmosphere as the boom turns to bust and local businesses built on the thriving oil community start to go broke. This is a memorable account of the Bakken boom and all that it entailed. Correction: An earlier version of this review incorrectly stated the author had spent seven years in the Bakken oilfield.