On some horribly still night, a cry rose from outside the bunkhouse. “Oil! Bring oil!” I was still awake. It had been a grueling three weeks at Mosquito Hill Logging Camp. A writer by trade, my body had been rendered useless by the daily labor, barely strong enough to scratch my racing thoughts into a notebook each night. The foreman, an old sausage of a Dwarf named Jakko, had agreed to let me observe the dozens of migrant Herran he employed, on the condition that I earn my keep. For the whole of winter, I was the Cookee’s boy (an assistant to the assistant Cook), hauling canteens of water and steaming sacks of pancakes out to the workers, and lugging firewood back to the camp. Now, nearly sixty souls jammed into that musky bunkhouse scrambled out of their cots and into the snow, bundled in blanketcoats and longjohns—Dwarves and Herrans blended together in their patchwork uniform. I followed, weakly. At the stable, the Teamster continued to holler, and the lumberjacks huddled around h...