Beaton’s book is a powerful memoir on the complex multivocality of a controversial industry. Most of us would instantly rise to condemn or defend tar sands oil extractions, depending upon our climate politics. Beaton, though, navigates this terrain carefully, holding virtually the entire work to the viewpoint of her own personal experiences working in them. The result is a view of humans, struggling and broken, cruel and victimized, kindly and awkward, making do as they can.

The isolated workplaces are dangerous to their employees, both from the machines and each other; the hierarchies are negligent and/or ignorant of the tragedies happening beneath them. Beaton offers a long series of tangential quick-take episodes from her memory. One tragic episode is as likely to be juxtaposed to a comical one, a poignant moment next to an ambiguously unresolved conversation. The result is how we live, how she did. And for that, Ducks is successful.

Beaton, by her own admission, barely touches upon the plight of the First Nations people here (she also fails to address the motivations of politics or company owners), but this is because, as a young woman looking to pay off student loans, she had no access to these experiences. Therefore, do not go into this book seeking a banner in the climate wars. Instead, meet the faces of those caught up in  the industry directly rather than abstractly. Make room for them.