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The Making of a Carpenter
W.W. Norton
March 2015
On Sale: March 16, 2015
Featuring: Nina MacLaughlin
240 pages ISBN: 0393239136 EAN: 9780393239133 Kindle: B00L3KQ1J0 Hardcover / e-Book
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Non-Fiction Memoir
A warm and inspiring book for anyone who has ever dreamed of
changing tracks: the story of a young woman who quit her
desk job to become a carpenter. Nina MacLaughlin spent her twenties working at a Boston
newspaper, sitting behind a desk and staring at a screen.
Yearning for more tangible work, she applied for a job she
saw on Craigslist—Carpenter’s Assistant: Women strongly
encouraged to apply—despite being a Classics major who
couldn't tell a Phillips from a flathead screwdriver. She
got the job, and in Hammer Head she tells the rich
and entertaining story of becoming a carpenter. Writing with infectious curiosity, MacLaughlin describes the
joys and frustrations of making things by hand, reveals the
challenges of working as a woman in an occupation that is 99
percent male, and explains how manual labor changed the way
she sees the world. We meet her unflappable mentor, Mary, a
petite but tough carpenter-sage (“Be smarter than the
tools!”), as well as wild demo dudes, foul-mouthed
plumbers, grizzled hardware store clerks, and the colorful
clients whose homes she and Mary work in. Whisking her readers from job to job—building a wall,
remodeling a kitchen, gut-renovating a house—MacLaughlin
examines the history of the tools she uses and the virtues
and varieties of wood. Throughout, she draws on the wisdom
of Ovid, Annie Dillard, Studs Terkel, and Mary Oliver to
illuminate her experience of work. And, in a deeply moving
climax, MacLaughlin strikes out on her own for the first
time to build bookshelves for her own father. Hammer Head is a passionate book full of sweat,
swearing, bashed thumbs, and a deep sense of finding real
meaning in work and life.
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