• Home
  • About
  • Contact
  • News/Blog
  • Writing
    • Anthologies
    • Work Available Online
    • Stealing Dust
    • Wearing Heels in the Rust Belt
  • Reviews
  • Book Picks
    • Best Collections
  • Favorite Links
    • Favorite Blogs and Websites
    • Literary Journals
    • Nature Websites and Writing
    • Working-Class Resources
  • Work Available Online

Book Recommendations and Reviews

My personal picks!

Read This Book: Wolf Hollow by Lauren Wolk

5/28/2016

0 Comments

 
Picture
In this haunting coming-of-age book, Lauren Wolk introduces us to the thoughtful and kind 12-year-old Annabelle who is growing up in rural western Pennsylvania in 1943. Wolk opens up her book with the words of the main character: "The year I turn ed twelve, I learned how to lie."

What follows is a story about love, friendship, and betrayal. We are introduced to a new student in Annabelle's class, Betty Glengarry, a child who is violent and cruel. We are also introduced to Toby, a veteran of the Great War, who suffers from an mysterious mental illness that renders him as simply strange to the small rural community. And finally, we are introduced to Annabelle's best friend, Ruth, a fragile child caught in the crossfire of violence and cruelty.  When all three of these lives collide, Annabelle is faced with the biggest challenge of her young life.

 It's easy to compare Annabelle to Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird, and indeed many reviewers do. Yet, perhaps because the story takes place in a landscape that is more familiar to me than the deep South, I found young Annabelle to be more courageous, more realistic, and indeed, more human than many young heroines found in coming-of-age novels. 

I have eagerly looked forward to Wolk's second book since I read her first novel, Those Who Favor Fire, a novel that takes place in a small town that rests on top of a burning underground coal fire. Wolf Hollow did not disappoint. 



0 Comments

Read This Book: Heat & Light by Jennifer Haigh

5/16/2016

0 Comments

 
Picture
In her newest novel, Jennifer Haigh returns to the small Pennsylvanian town of Baker Towers, a world she first explored in her 2005 book by the same name. In Baker Towers, she explores coal mining, but in Heat & Light, she opens her book with a short history of oil.  

Then, she delivers a single line that stayed with me as I read the rest of the book: "More than most places, Pennsylvania is what lies beneath."

As someone who was born and raised in Pennsylvania, I am well aware of how defined my world was by what was beneath me. I am also well aware of  the state's problematic relationships with the environment and the blue collar/working class world. Haigh's newest novel takes us into the heat of this relationship with the story of how fracking invades and thus, changes the lives of those who live in Baker Towers, Pennsylvania.

It's through this story that learn about Rich Devlin, who leases his mineral rights to finance his dreams of farming. We learn about his young daughter, whose mysterious illness may or may not be because of environmental issues that have been caused fracking. We learn about a lonely preacher, who falls in love with one of the workers who is fracking the land. We learn about organic dairy farmers, Mack and Rena, whose business is hurt by the environmental issues going on around them. All of their lives are intertwined by the arrival of fracking in their world. 

Yes, Haigh's novel is political. There's no denying that. Still, she doesn't offer any clear cut answers to the questions she poses through her characters about a world where fracking may be both a blessing and a curse.

Perhaps that is what I loved most about this book. 

Visit Haigh's website to learn more about Heat & Light and her other novels.  

​




​

​

0 Comments

    Author

    In many ways, I am more of a reader than a writer. This page will serve as a home for my informal reviews of what I've been reading.

    Archives

    August 2016
    May 2016
    January 2016
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    October 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014

    Categories

    All
    Essays
    Literary Nonfiction
    Memoir
    Nature Writing
    Poetry
    Sense Of Place
    Working Class Literature
    Working-Class Literature

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.