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Thick Skin: Field Notes from a Sister In The Brotherhood
For more than two decades, Hilary Peach worked as a transient welder, and one of the only women, in the Boilermakers Union. Distilled from a vast cache of journals, notes, and keen observations, Thick Skin follows Peach from the West Coast shipyards and pulp mills of British Columbia, through the Alberta tar sands and the Ontario rust belt, to the colossal power generating stations of the Eastern Seaboard of the United States. At times edging up to the surreal, Thick Skin is a collection of strange stories carefully told, in tenderness and ferocity, for anyone who has spent time in a trade, or is curious about the unseen world of industrial construction.
314 pages, Kindle Edition
Published May 30, 2023
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
September 21, 2024
Some skin never hardens
Hilary Peach has given us a peek under the welder's mask from the perspective of a woman working for 20 years in what remains today a male dominated trade. As a trail blazer, she constantly wonders why she must grow thicker skin rather than everyone else just being a little more tender.
The reader travels with Peach from jobsite to jobsite across North America, meeting good men and lousy ones, a few women, and some notable animals, too. Each of the stories brings us closer to the moment Peach hangs up her helmet, but the joy of this read is getting there.
Peach's storytelling is very grounded in reality, not just in her authenticity, but in how she writes about men who have little interest in adapting to a woman on a jobsite. Maybe the hardest thing for the reader is learning that Peach picks very few fights, opting instead to "be the bigger person" in situations we think we wouldn't.
It's such a good book to read if you've ever felt out of place in a job that you also felt called to, or if you want to understand how many women see the trades.
Hilary Peach has given us a peek under the welder's mask from the perspective of a woman working for 20 years in what remains today a male dominated trade. As a trail blazer, she constantly wonders why she must grow thicker skin rather than everyone else just being a little more tender.
The reader travels with Peach from jobsite to jobsite across North America, meeting good men and lousy ones, a few women, and some notable animals, too. Each of the stories brings us closer to the moment Peach hangs up her helmet, but the joy of this read is getting there.
Peach's storytelling is very grounded in reality, not just in her authenticity, but in how she writes about men who have little interest in adapting to a woman on a jobsite. Maybe the hardest thing for the reader is learning that Peach picks very few fights, opting instead to "be the bigger person" in situations we think we wouldn't.
It's such a good book to read if you've ever felt out of place in a job that you also felt called to, or if you want to understand how many women see the trades.
May 17, 2025
wonderful.
Wonderfully written. Insight and thoughtfulness. I loved this book. We read it to each other and, who knew we would not be able to put down a book about welding. We laughed and cried.
Wonderfully written. Insight and thoughtfulness. I loved this book. We read it to each other and, who knew we would not be able to put down a book about welding. We laughed and cried.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews