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.
