Heat & Light, Jennifer Haigh

Forty year 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 Delvin leases his mineral rights to finance his dream of farming. He doesn't count on the truck traffic and nonstop noise, his brothers skepticism or the paranoia of his wife, Shelby. Meanwhile his neighbors, organic dairy farmer Mack and Rena, hold out against the drilling - 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 national resources. This is a dispatch from a forgotten America - a work of searing moral clarity from one of the finest writers of her generation, a courageous and necessary book.

427 pages.

Used- Good. 

Paperback.

Small Town & Rural Fiction, Political Fiction.

Adults.