Named a Best Book of The Year by The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal and NPR.
An Amazon Editors’ Pick
Jennifer Haigh returns to Bakerton, Pennsylvania – the setting of her iconic Baker Towers – in this “gripping, real and totally immersive” (New York Times) novel.
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.
Heat and Light is the story of a community blessed and cursed by its natural 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.
“a tour de force”
-- Janet Maslin, The New York Times
“Each page glimmers… Heat and Light is an exemplar of fiction’s capacity to awaken us to truth.”
-- O, the Oprah Magazine
“Heat and Light achieves pure novelistic virtuosity. It’s brilliant beginning to end.”
-- Richard Ford