A review by ellenrhudy
Heat and Light by Jennifer Haigh

4.0

Jennifer Haigh does a pretty amazing job here, displaying the horrors (big and small) of fracking without preaching. Most of the story takes place in a small town in PA, following a group of characters including oil riggers, scientists, farmers, a meth addict, a preacher, a family that's signed an oil lease. Bakerton, forgotten after its coal runs out, comes back on the map when natural gas companies begin signing leases to drill the Marcellus Shale running under the town. Haigh lets us see this from every angle, from the CEO driving this move to the farmers refusing to sign a lease and being used, in another way, by a scientist who wants only to communicate the horrors of fracking (even where that means bending the truth). The novel doesn't end so much as it moves away from these characters; the story is going to continue elsewhere, wherever cheaper drilling happens next. What makes this novel work is that every character is flawed, acting on sometimes questionable motives or a skewed vision of the world; Haigh doesn't try to falsely wrap up any of their stories, and you have the sense that they're still out there somewhere.