Alexandra Fuller gained accolades for her first book, Don't Let's Go the Dogs Tonight, about growing up in Rhodesia. Her latest title, The Legend of Colton H. Bryant is a thoroughly American story about a young man in Wyoming who dies working on an oil rig. I thought the book would be about energy and the environment but I was wrong; this is about class - the working class - and about an odd twist that has found us with a western mythos that now can not support itself.

Fuller writes the book in a series of short chapters that focus on Colton's entire life. She has clearly spent an enormous amount of time talking to his family and his best friend and various chapters focus on their lives as well. This fits into the narrative of hard life on the plains as all of them - everyone it seems - is tied in one way or another to the oil industry. What we learn from the beginning is Colton was kind of a goofy kid, not all that interested in school, picked on by bullies and more at home running around outside, on horseback, and spending time with his family. He comes across as a very lovable character: kind, hardworking, even endearing. His needs and wants are simple and revolve around the people he cares about, the place he loves, and a maybe getting a truck and a stereo.

Colton was not the kind to reach for the moon, but rather his universe was in Wyoming. The west - the iconic vision of the west that is about horses and outdoors and feeling the beauty of the wide open spaces - is all that he wanted to be part of. It's finding a job and way to survive there that proves to be so damn hard.

Here is a passage about Colton's father, Bill Bryant, and a lifetime spent working the rigs:

There have been some rigs Bill's worked on where he was gone for a month, back for a week. He's done two weeks on, two weeks off. He's done a week at a time. He's done flat out, day in, day out, until the hole was drilled. He's done pretty much every variation of time you can think of. And in that time, first Preston and then Colton followed him onto the rigs. What hasn't changed is the company Bill's drilled for - for over thirty years he's drilled for the same company, but they still have him on their books as a part-time laborer, which makes it easier for them to fire him the moment he gets too old or too slow or if he slips. And just recently, some kid out of the head office saw a ten gallon discrepancy in a fuel tank filled by Bill and fired him on the spot. So the next week Bill was back out in Casper submitting himself to urine tests and physicals and safety talks so he could sign on with a new company.

But none of this seems to bother Bill much. He looks at the terms of his employment much the way most men think of women or the weather or something beyond the power of his control.

This notion of powerlessness in your job, of doing the best you can in school and then getting a job that pays decent and finding all joy only in the family you make or the quiet moments away from work, permeates the book. It's not that Colton hates the rigs, but he does hate the time away from home (especially after he gets married) and he hates the boredom of the job - the doing nothing or doing the same thing over and over followed by doing something suddenly and in a blind rush. He hates the lack of rhythm, the lack of sense. He hates that he just has to do what he has to do. But he doesn't know what else to do. He tries construction but it doesn't work out because the money is not as good. The lure of that money makes it hard to walk away from the rigs, even though honestly the money is not all that great and the benefits are appalling. Fuller makes it clear that only when compared to dismal options does working the rigs in Wyoming seem like something to aspire to. But to everyone there, those dismal options seem like the only ones they have.

I did wonder if Fuller had fallen into some hyperbole with her story - it's so damn compelling and Colton is such a sympathetic hero that the temptation to make him a victim on multiple levels had to be great. So I looked around a bit and came across this huge article at High County News from last year about safety on the oil rigs. Suffice to say, Fuller was not exaggerating.

From Louisiana to Alaska, oil and gas is an industry in a rush, spurred by a sense of worldwide shortage and entranced by escalated prices and inordinate profits. And the industry targets the Interior West, especially; the region’s summertime total of drilling rigs has soared since 2000, from 204 to 447, according to RigData, a Texas company that tracks the industry. With that increase in drilling and related activities, the number of fatal accidents has also risen. Last year alone, 20 people died doing jobs directly related to drilling and servicing wells in the region. And for the whole time period I studied — 2000 to 2006, roughly encompassing the current boom in coalbed-methane and other natural gas exploration — federal and state records show at least 89 people died working in energy extraction in the states of Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, Montana and North Dakota. That toll is almost certainly an understatement, and not just because the average oil and gas death gets less publicity than, say, a fatal traffic wreck. This industry’s true accident totals, fatal and otherwise, are as shrouded in obscurity as the Laster case is.

Working the oil rigs is a dangerous job but here is the catch - it does not have to be. One of the things I learned early on working in aviation in Alaska was that most of the accidents were caused because people were doing things they should not do and often did not want to do. They took chances to keep jobs or keep their company going so it could pay them, plain and simple. It was insane and while you can blame them for taking those jobs the reality in that industry is that there is little you can do beyond starvation wages until you get enough flight time to apply to the majors (and that takes years of flight time). Flying a commuter will earn you less than $20,000 a year and you're gone from home for more than half the month. Go to AK and fly like a maniac for half the time and you get twice the hours (we just fly a heckuva a lot more there than the average scheduled commuter pilot). So I know about taking changes and putting up with a dangerous environment. I also know there is nothing romantic about it and all you walk away with is money and the names of a bunch of dead friends.

Ray Ring's article in High Country News is a litany of both those truths.

After reading The Legend of Colton H. Bryant I am horrified all over again by what we do not know about how people work and live in this country. And I'm tired - deeply, intensely, very nearly overwhelmingly tired with the argument for how much we need oil. I get it, I know it, we are addicted as President Bush declared so well several years ago. But what we don't see is how much we are paying for that addiction, how incredible the high price is in terms of hopes and dreams and desires for a good life. Colton Bryant didn't want much and he should have been able to have it all. He should have been able to live out all his happy golden years in Wyoming.

He should have made it past the age of twenty-five.