Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands

This book is emotional, raw, honest...I was absolutely destroyed.
There was nothing but me and this book for 2 days, I thought about it always when I wasn't reading it and when I was done reading it...it was all I could think about!

When I found out Kate was going to be one of the few women working on the oil fields, I was scared for her for several reasons but I was mostly scared for her about the working environment dominated by men. I never expected the experience, the story, the empathy, and how she managed to still keep her sense of humor still after it all. I was surprised that this story is much deeper than surface level...to see how she was treated, to see how her co-workers who were women treated her (and you know they were facing similar things), her age, how it felt to be treated as worthless, how life in the camps drained away their humanity & decency, despite being free from the camp that society didn't even really change, the working culture with other factories being shutdown and men having to switch careers because this life is all they know, corporate greed, fighting to get out of debt, and the suffering of First Nation people and their land and quality of life being destroyed by the oil sands.
There is a lot to unpack here and I hope to read it again to pick up on the nuance I've missed.

There is not a page wasted. The illustrations have extreme can put into them...black/white was a powerful choice and there are images of beauty which can't even ever been seen because all it is ...is the oil sands. It ruins it. It still has a moment to breath but the feeling overtakes you when you see how ugly it is.

You feel it all in this graphic novel - the story it tells is not just Kate's alone but what the oil sands was to many people.