As a midwesterner, my life has been saturated with Alberta’s oil. My first car, a used Ford F-150 with a bench seat stained brown from the plumber who owned it before me, had dual fuel tanks that held over thirty gallons of gasoline. Much of that gas came from Alberta oil.

Because this issue has been overlooked from a political and cultural and intellectual standpoint, partially because of its association with girls, I wanted to give it a really serious treatment.

A beautiful 317-page gut punch, the Great Cleveland Novel if Cleveland will have it, Walker’s book is both a wistful eulogy and a searing indictment, one which stops short of proposing solutions because are you fucking kidding me?