Ducks
  • Published: 15 October 2022
  • ISBN: 9781787330139
  • Imprint: Jonathan Cape
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 436
  • RRP: $60.00

Ducks

Two Years in the Oil Sands: One of Barack Obama’s Favourite Books of 2022

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Celebrated cartoonist Kate Beaton vividly presents the untold story of Canada

*WINNER OF THE EISNER AWARDS FOR BEST MEMOIR AND BEST WRITER/ARTIST*

'A vast and complex tapestry that captures the humanity of people... it shimmers with grace'
ALISON BECHDEL, author of FUN HOME

Before there was Kate Beaton, New York Times bestselling cartoonist of Hark A Vagrant, there was Katie Beaton of the Cape Breton Beatons, a tight-knit seaside community. After university, Katie heads out west to take advantage of Alberta's oil rush, part of the long tradition of East Coast Canadians who seek gainful employment elsewhere when they can't find it in the homeland they love so much. With the singular goal of paying off her student loans, what the journey will actually cost Katie will be far more than she anticipates.

Arriving in Fort McMurray, Katie finds work in the lucrative camps owned and operated by the world's largest oil companies. As one of the few women among thousands of men, the culture shock is palpable. It does not hit home until she moves to a spartan, isolated worksite for higher pay. Katie encounters the harsh reality of life in the oil sands where trauma is an everyday occurrence yet never discussed. For young Katie, her wounds may never heal.

Beaton's natural cartooning prowess is on full display as she draws colossal machinery and mammoth vehicles set against a sublime Albertan backdrop of wildlife, Northern Lights, and Rocky Mountains. Her first full length graphic narrative, Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands is an untold story of Canada: a country that prides itself on its egalitarian ethos and natural beauty while simultaneously exploiting both the riches of its land and the humanity of its people.
  • Published: 15 October 2022
  • ISBN: 9781787330139
  • Imprint: Jonathan Cape
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 436
  • RRP: $60.00
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About the author

Kate Beaton

Kate Beaton was born in Nova Scotia, took a history degree in New Brunswick, paid it off in Alberta, worked in a museum in British Columbia, then came to Ontario for a while to draw pictures, then Halifax, and now New York. Maybe the moon next time, who knows.

portrait photo of Kate Beaton

Also by Kate Beaton

Step Aside, Pops
Hark! A Vagrant
See all

Praise for Ducks

Beaton delivers a masterpiece graphic memoir

Publisher's Weekly (Starred Review)

An exceptionally beautiful book about loneliness, labor, and survival. Beaton is a thoughtful guide through a complex landscape of class and gender, and these pages ache with grief and grace.

Carmen Maria Machado, author of In the Dream House

A masterpiece, a heartbreak, a nightlight shining in the dark.

Patricia Lockwood, author of No One Is Talking About This

Devastating. Despite the brutal toll Beaton suffered personally, she has woven from her experience a vast and complex tapestry that captures the humanity of people doing a kind of "dirty work" in which we are all complicit, and it shimmers with grace.

Alison Bechdel, author of Fun Home

Kate Beaton's comics are rich with quiet revelations, intimate details, and a deadpan, devastating sense of humor. A generous and illuminating book; I suspect it will stay on my mind for a very long time.

Anna Wiener, author of Uncanny Valley

Ducks is an unforgettable, riveting work. Kate Beaton opens the mind's eye, allowing us to inhabit landscapes and experiences crucial to our time, yet largely unseen. Artful, considered and courageous, Ducks is a landmark work.

Madeleine Thien, author of Do Not Say We Have Nothing

Ducks delivers an immersive, harrowing journey through an industry where the lure of fast money belies darker realities of casual brutality, profound loneliness and soul-cracking isolation. The uneasy echoes of Beaton's story ring well past the the final page. Shattering.

Jessica Bruder, author of Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century

Honest, compassionate, and clear-eyed, Ducks is a stunning achievement in storytelling that I will be thinking about for a long time.

Jung Yun, author of O Beautiful

What a difficult, gorgeous and abidingly humane book. It really does deserve to win all the prizes.

Observer

Engrossing and powerful.

Guardian

A magnificent piece of work.... Ducks feels like a book that holds its own alongside the likes of both Guy Delisle (for the travelogue-y aspects of the book) and Joe Sacco (for the more political aspects of the book) whilst, crucially, carving out something of its very own... One of (if not the) standout graphic novels of 2022.

Bookmunch

Engrossing.

Irish Examiner

Ducks moves into dark territory - including sexual assault - but Beaton... balances light and shade. No place or person is wholly good or bad, not even the oil sands with their dark satanic drills.

Telegraph

A superb graphic novel

Jonathan Coe, Guardian, *Summer Reads of 2024*