Details
Synopsis
A coal miner's granddaughter writes about a Pennsylvania town where coal is king, and where the "towers" of the title are the two enormous slag heaps looming over the place. The Polish-American Novak family is the focus of the story--a widowed mother and a large assortment of brothers and sisters, some of whom manage to escape the dead-end life offered by Bakerton, some of whom succumb. Mama Rosa, whose husband died in the mines, is the presiding presence, the tough, nurturing rock who keeps her family mostly steady, but the narrative shifts among several characters, providing a changing perspective on a slice of American life as it was fading away.
| Size | | Length: | 334 pages | | Height: | 8.0 in | | Width: | 5.3 in | | Thickness: | 1.0 in | | Weight: | 9.6 oz |
Publisher's Notes
First Line: "Softly the snow falls. In the blue morning light a train winds through the hills."
Industry Reviews
"[An] effortlessly haunting story [that] abounds with satisfyingly real and vivid individuals....[T]his book has the heart to end, credibly and unsentimentally, on a note of rebirth. And Bakerton is utterly, entrancingly alive on the page even as it is supposed to be fading away."
New York Times - Janet Maslin (01/13/2005)
"An elegant, elegiac multigenerational saga about a small coal-mining community in western Pennsylvania...Their lives unfold in episodes that tie the individual to the community, and the lines of connection between characters-even the most minor-weave an intricate social tapestry. By the time the mines close for good, every thread connects. Almost mythic in its ambition, somewhere between Oates and Updike country, and thoroughly satisfying."
Kirkus (09/15/2004)
|
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
All rights reserved.
