June 5, 2017
The 2017 title for the Nashua Public Library’s annual Nashua Reads: One City, One Book program is Heat and Light by Jennifer Haigh.
With support from the Friends of the Nashua Public Library and the Ella Anderson Trust, Jennifer Haigh will come to Nashua to speak and answer questions about the book. The event will be held at the Nashua Public Library on October 13. Tickets are available at the Nashua Public Library and at www.mktix.com/npl.
About the book
“Beautiful property you’ve got here.”
That’s the first thing the drillers say to homeowners when they stop by houses situated on the Marcellus Shale in the fictitious town of Bakerton, Pennsylvania. With promises of big money, they entice townspeople to lease the natural gas drilling rights to their land.
In a downtrodden small town that thrived in an earlier industrial age, the deal offers a second chance. Rich, a prison guard, plans to quit his job and farm his land, even while his wife thinks a contaminated water supply will poison their daughter. Mack and Rena, organic dairy farmers, refuse to jump on the bandwagon, until a charismatic environmentalist comes to town and fractures their relationship. And the environmental threat is all too familiar to the local pastor, whose husband died of cancer after being exposed to radiation in the 1979 Three Mile Island nuclear accident.
About the author
2017 Nashua Reads author Jennifer Haigh.
Jennifer Haigh is the critically acclaimed author of five novels (Heat and Light,“Faith, The Condition, Baker Towers, and Mrs. Kimble) and a collection of short stories (News From Heaven). Her work has won numerous awards, including the PEN/Hemingway Award for debut fiction, the PEN /L.L. Winship Award, the PEN/New England Award in Fiction, and the Massachusetts Book Award.
Jennifer has published short stories in The Atlantic, Granta, The Best American Short Stories, and many other places. The Western Pennsylvania town of Barnesboro, where she grew up, served as inspiration for the fictional town of Bakerton, the setting of Baker Towers and Heat and Light.
A graduate of Dickinson College and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Jennifer now lives in the Boston area.
Get Your Copy Now
The library has over 80 copies of Heat and Light, including large-print, audio, and e-book versions. In addition, multiple copies are available for borrowing by book groups.
So reserve your copy; read it; talk about it with your friends, coworkers, and neighbors; and then come to the Nashua Public Library to meet the author this fall.
About One City, One Book
The goal of the One City, One Book program is to get as many Nashuans as possible to read the same book and talk about it with friends, coworkers, and neighbors. The program is now in its 15th year.
The idea of community reading programs originated in 1998 when the Washington Center for the Book sponsored “If All of Seattle Read the Same Book.” In the years since, similar programs, under names like “One City, One Book,” “The Big Read,” and others, have been held throughout the US.
For more information about the Nashua Reads program, contact Carol Luers Eyman at (603) 589-4610 or carol.eyman@nashualibrary.org, or visit www.nashuareads.com.
Arrangements for the appearance of Jennifer Haigh were made through HarperCollins Speakers Bureau, New York, NY