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Loading... Heat and Light (2016)by Jennifer Haigh
   Books Read in 2016 (698) Books Read in 2020 (1,741) No current Talk conversations about this book.   ) brook11trout | Jul 10, 2023 |  The novel contains a wide array of characters, covering all sides of the fracking debate. They include local residents, Texas oil executives, salespeople, drilling crews, sub-contractors, and environmental activists. The characters are believable, and the community is well-drawn. It is as easy to sympathize with the family that wants to save money to fulfill their dream of opening a dairy farm as it is with the organic farmers that do not want questions about the quality of their products. In this depressed economic area, the author incorporates struggles related to job losses and drug addictions. This novel is a story about class, economics, and the impact of drilling. Dramatic tension is maintained through the question of whether or not the drinking water is contaminated, resulting in disagreements among families and neighbors. Haigh’s writing is imaginative and perceptive. I am impressed by her ability to juggle the many storylines without seeming overextended. I will definitely be reading more of her work. ( ) Castlelass | Oct 30, 2022 | - Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER (  ) TimBazzett | May 21, 2022 | ) ChetBowers | Mar 10, 2021 | Taking place in the town of Bakertown, "Heat & Light" showcases the changes the town experiences after a natural gas deposit is found. I really can't tell you much more than that. There were characters whose names I am blanking on. Some of the book followed some of the characters and then it jumps around to those people who want to drill in the town, and then back again. I just recall the character of Shelby and her family and how her and her husband Rich don't seem to like each other much. The writing was okay, but honestly the flow of this book was disjointed. We kept jumping around timelines (I think) and I honestly couldn't keep straight what was going on. I wish that Ms. Haigh had just focused on the residents of the town and that's it. The setting of Bakertown felt flat in this one. Probably because there's not much description of the place beyond the opening chapter. I really didn't get a sense of how the town had changed to it's present day setting in the book. I just wish that any part of the book (people, characters, and writing) had come alive for me in any way. Instead I was bored from almost the beginning right up until I DNFed at page 210. (  ) ObsidianBlue | Jul 1, 2020 | no reviews | add a review
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HTML: Acclaimed New York Times bestselling author Jennifer Haigh returns to the Pennsylvania town at the center of her iconic novel Baker Towers in this ambitious, achingly human story of modern America and the conflicting forces at its heartâ??a bold, moving drama of hope and desperation, greed and power, big business and small-town families. Forty years ago, Bakerton coal fueled the country. Then the mines closed, and the town wore away like a bar of soap. Now Bakerton has been granted a surprise third act: it sits squarely atop the Marcellus Shale, a massive deposit of natural gas. To drill or not to drill? Prison guard Rich Devlin leases his mineral rights to finance his dream of farming. He doesn't count on the truck traffic and nonstop noise, his brother's skepticism or the paranoia of his wife, Shelby, who insists the water smells strange and is poisoning their frail daughter. Meanwhile his neighbors, organic dairy farmers Mack and Rena, hold out against the drillingâ??until a passionate environmental activist disrupts their lives. Told through a cast of characters whose lives are increasingly bound by the opposing interests that underpin the national debate, Heat and Light depicts a community blessed and cursed by its natural resources. Soaring and ambitious, it zooms from drill rig to shareholders' meeting to the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor to the ruined landscape of the "strippins," haunting reminders of Pennsylvania's past energy booms. This is a dispatch from a forgotten Americaâ??a work of searing moral clarity from one of the finest writers of her generation, a courageous and necessary b No library descriptions found. |
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 Google Books — Loading...GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.6Literature English (North America) American fiction 21st CenturyLC ClassificationRatingAverage: (3.81)
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