Makeup disguises Laura’s fractured eye socket as she prepares to board a train home. After a night of heavy drinking with friends, she woke up in a hotel room with her ex-boyfriend choking her and kicking her in the groin. She moved to Williston with her current boyfriend to seek work less than three weeks prior.
A mother of four speaks to police officers about the restraining order her husband placed on her. She has not seen her children in more than a week, the longest she has ever been away from them.
A week after her attack, she’s still experiencing severe pain in her groin and eye.
She takes late-night baths to soothe her anxiety attacks. After her ex-boyfriend was released from jail, he actively searched for her and her son.
“Should I have shot him? Tell me. What would have happened if I shot him?” She asks the police officer, who is filing a restraining order against her ex-boyfriend.
A gas fire smokes in the distance of the Ridge, Williston’s first master-planned community.
While sipping whiskey, oil workers carry fireworks to the Epping-Springbrook Dam on July 4, 2014.
A man leaves the parking lot at the Cash Wise grocery store during winter 2013.
A bit welder smokes a cigarette at his home in Williston. During summer 2013, there was a severe housing shortage, and housing prices dramatically rose after the oil boom began.
“As long as the boom ain’t over and I ain’t in prison—both are distinct possibilities—make no mistake, I’ll be out here,” a man says. He has been living in Williston and working in the oil field for three years.
You know what’s nice?” She says on the way out of the gas station. “Being able to get in the car and go to the store. Without asking.”
A child has a tantrum on July 4, 2013.
A dust storm rolls over New Town, North Dakota.
A girl moves out of a shelter with her mother and three siblings. During the time the family stayed there, the mother was demoted at work because her boss thought that her personal life got in the way of her job.