A memoir covering a young widow’s investigation into the work-related death of her husband.
Bautz, a one-time happily married school librarian, finds a widow’s burden—loneliness coupled with a proclivity toward “what if…”—foisted upon her prematurely when she learns of her husband’s death in the course of rig work in Canada. Bautz undertakes an investigation not only for the sake of personal justice, but on behalf of the living workers whom she fears are being victimized by a company’s tendency to turn a blind eye to legally mandated precautions. Through an intensive, sprawling process of talking with others who had worked for her late-husband’s employer, meeting with lawyers and demanding her right to telling documentation, Bautz eventually obtains the evidentiary “smoking gun” she needs, only to find that it gets her nowhere. She details the roundabout procedure of petitioning the Canadian legal system, all the while building empathy for her experience of dealing with an immense institution that appears unwilling to follow its own guidelines. Through friendship, personal writing, redemptive interaction with a shaman and opening herself to the potential of a new relationship, Bautz pieces her personal life together again. As the memoir winds to a close, tension once inherent in the author’s legal tribulations tapers out. The waning intensity would be more palatable, based on the empathetic attachment one can easily feel to Bautz, if that waning coincided with more attention paid to her personal journey. However, as her long-term legal efforts come to disappointing close, the insights drawn from her personal life become more general and further pushed aside from the narrative. While most of the conjecture braided throughout Bautz’s text appears to be level-headed and evidence-based, the metaphor she leads up to as a primary motivational force for her pursuit of justice and, more directly, for writing her memoir comes off as overreaching and overly sentimental.
While the manuscript would benefit from further polishing and a better organized ending, it is a compelling and well-researched examination of workplace safety laws.
