Galvanized

With Thick Skin, Hilary Peach describes her more than twenty years as an itinerant welder in oil refineries, pulp and paper mills, and shipyards. Since Peach was the rare woman in a male-dominated trade, it is easy to imagine a feminist manifesto. But in fact she describes her experiences — the bad and the good — without making obvious judgments. The memoir is more powerful for this restraint.

In the early 2000s, pressure welders were in high demand, and a good welder was “a star.” If your welding joints consistently passed the X‑ray tests that ensured they would hold, “you got the best jobs, all the overtime, better hotel rooms, overcooked steak dinners with the boss at Moxy’s, served by underage girls in short skirts.” Pressure welders who pulled so‑called travel cards —“When a boilermaker local is short-handed they will put a call out to the locals in other regions...