O Beautiful

More about the book

From the critically-acclaimed author of Shelter comes an unflinching portrayal of a woman grappling with her past amid a deeply divided America. Elinor Hanson, a forty-something former model, seeks to reinvent herself as a freelance writer when she receives an unexpected assignment from her grad school mentor to cover the Bakken oil boom in North Dakota. Having grown up near the Bakken, Elinor returns to a landscape transformed by an influx of newcomers, feeling alienated in a community where roughnecks chase fortunes and long-time residents fear change. Confronted by the male gaze and local perceptions that label her a foreigner, she wrestles with the memories of her family's estrangement after her mother left her and her sister behind to escape an unhappy marriage. As Elinor delves into this potentially career-defining assignment, her past increasingly intertwines with her narrative, revealing unsettling truths that alter her perspective. With spare, graceful prose, the story immerses readers in a community fraught with tensions and competing interests, highlighting one woman's struggle to reconcile her anger with her love for a beautiful yet troubled land.