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Harper
256 pages
Product Description
<p> The bestselling author of <em>Faith</em> and <em>The Condition</em> returns with a collection of unforgettable short stories inspired by a Pennsylvania coal-mining town and the people who call it home. </p> <p> When her iconic novel <em>Baker Towers</em> was published in 2005, it was hailed as a modern classic—"compassionate and powerful . . . a song of praise for a too-little-praised part of America, for the working families whose toils and constancy have done so much to make the country great" (<em>Chicago Tribune</em>). Its young author, Jennifer Haigh, was "an expert natural storyteller with an acute sense of her characters' humanity" (<em>New York Times</em>). </p> <p> Now, in this collection of interconnected short stories, Jennifer Haigh returns to the vividly imagined world of Bakerton, Pennsylvania, a coal-mining town rocked by decades of painful transition. From its heyday during two world wars through its slow decline, Bakerton is a town that refuses to give up gracefully, binding—sometimes cruelly—succeeding generations to the place that made them. A young woman glimpses a world both strange and familiar when she becomes a live-in maid for a Jewish family in New York City. A long-absent brother makes a sudden and tragic homecoming. A solitary middle-aged woman tastes unexpected love when a young man returns to town. With a revolving cast of characters—many familiar to fans of <em>Baker Towers</em>—these stories explore how our roots, the families and places in which we are raised, shape the people we eventually become. </p> <p> <em>News from Heaven</em> looks unflinchingly at the conflicting human desires for escape and for connection, and explores the enduring hold of home. </p>