The Legend of Colton H. Bryant

March 10, 2008
Fuller, author of the bestselling Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight,
narrates the tragically short life of Colton H. Bryant, a Wyoming roughneck in his mid-20s who in 2006 fell to his death on an oil rig owned by Patterson–UTI Energy. A Wyoming resident herself since 1994, Fuller is expert in evoking the stark landscape and recreating the speech and mentality of her adopted state’s native sons. Along the way, she sheds light on the tough, unpredictable lives of Wyoming’s oilmen and the toll exacted on their families. Though the book is wonderfully poignant and poetic and reads more like a novel than biography, Fuller acknowledges that she has taken narrative liberties, composed dialogue, disregarded certain aspects of Colton’s life and occasionally juggled chronology “to create a smoother story line,” leading readers to wonder what is true and what invented for dramatic purposes. As such, it is difficult to assess Fuller’s simplistic conclusion that the company’s drive to cut costs killed the young man, though she is right to highlight the strikingly high number of fatalities in the industry. As a touching portrait of a life cut short and a perceptive immersion in the environment that nurtures such men, Fuller’s volume excels, but in terms of absolute veracity it should be read with caution.

Colton Bryant, a young Wyoming roughneck more eighteenth century than twenty-first, always said that when he died, people would be sorry they'd made him waste so much time in school, which he disliked, and was bad at. He did die young--falling from an oil rig--and they were sorry. Fuller tries valiantly to create an aura of poignancy and meaning around Colton with her prose style, which is indeed beautiful, if overheated for some tastes. For the listener, the experience might have succeeded if Ed Sala had made Colton as lovable as his family and friends found him. Perhaps it was an impossible task, or it may be that Sala's squeaky rendering of Colton's most common expression--"holy crap!"--or his laugh as a foolish-sounding "heh-heh-heh" dooms the venture. B.G. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine