The Crash Palace does an incredible job at transcribing the obtuse culture of Alberta’s remote tar sand work camps. These are shady isolated locations where masculinity rules (often problematically) large, and yet Andrew Wedderburn somehow writes about this place from a female perspective and does so respectfully well and believably. As a reader, you can feel the energy, the tension, and it’s uncomfortable, which is an authorial success. I know this is only part of the book, but I was very impressed with it, and would recommend the book almost solely on this quality. Good work, Wedderburn!