SWEET CRUDE / BOOK / J. Pahl

ABOUT SWEET CRUDE
Sweet Crude is a 2026 novella by author J. Pahl published by Beaumont House Press. Her website is jaclynpahl.com.

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SYNOPSIS

Myra is an adjunct professor at the City University of New York. She is writing an article on Wittgenstein’s notion of the inexpressible but cannot finish it. She would conclude her argument if it were not for a sad, strange form of silence that seems to emanate from her late father, Peter, who died while working in the Alberta oil sands. Driven by the unrelenting sound, Myra departs for the province and soon finds that travelling north is like being transported into the past. Alberta is a mythical terrain, where the Rubicon must be crossed, pawnbrokers are saints, and the flesh is capable of dramatic transmogrification. Her consciousness unfurling with the road, Myra slips into lyric time. She wakes in a motel room as a man and re-names herself, after an advertisement for cigarettes, Marl. He meets a group of roughnecks and spends with them a raucous night. In the sobering light of dawn, Marl continues his journey.

 

Layered and incisive, Sweet Crude gestures to the frenetic works of the Beat generation even as it marks a turning point in literature, lending a uniquely powerful mythology to the rural Canadian landscape.