Baker Towers - Softcover

Haigh, Jennifer

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0060509422 ISBN 13: 9780060509422

Publisher: Perennial, 2006

Synopsis

Bakerton is a community of company houses and church festivals, of union squabbles and firemen's parades. Its neighborhoods include Little Italy, Swedetown, and Polish Hill. For its tight-knit citizens -- and the five children of the Novak family -- the 1940s will be a decade of excitement, tragedy, and stunning change. Baker Towers is a family saga and a love story, a hymn to a time and place long gone, to America's industrial past, and to the men and women we now call the Greatest Generation. It is a feat of imagination from an extraordinary voice in American fiction, a writer of enormous power and skill.

About this title

Review:

"Terrific." -- Harlan Coben, The Birmingham News

Terrific. --Harlan Coben, The Birmingham News

"An elegant, elegiac multigenerational saga. . . . Almost mythic in its ambition, somewhere between Oates and Updike country, and thoroughly satisfying."--Kirkus Reviews, starred review

"A work that is quickly boosting [Haigh's] ascension to the vanguard of 21st century American novelists."--Patriot Ledger (Quincy, MA)

"The living, breathing organism that is Haigh's captivating book... [is an] effortlessly haunting story... [Haigh is] an expert natural storyteller."--New York Times

"Jennifer Haigh's ambitious, elegiac second novel, Baker Towers [is]... a rich portrait of place."--Washington Post Book World

"A good old-fashioned read... the author deftly evokes the particulars of a time and place."--Daily News

"[Haigh] writes convincingly of family and small town relations, as well as of the intractable frustrations of American poverty."--Publishers Weekly

"Terrific."--Harlan Coben, The Birmingham News

"Haigh's writing is rich and mellifluous, and her story certainly has an old-fashioned charm and dignity to it."--The Times (London)

From the Back Cover:

Stanley Novak is a first generation Polish immigrant. Seeking a better life, he moves to Bakerton and finds work in the booming local mine. The Novaks move to an area known as Polish Hill, teeming with immigrants from all over Europe, all chasing the American Dream.

Their five children belong to what will someday be known as the Greatest Generation, but for now, they are just trying to find their identities in a vastly changing world. The eldest, George, avoids signing up but is drafted to the Pacific when America joins the war. He comes home determined to avoid the mines and leave Bakerton behind. Dorothy is a fragile and naive girl, who finds it hard to cope with her desk job in Washington. Joyce, fiercely intelligent, must hold the family together and remains bitterly aware of the life that she could have had. Sandy swans through life with his movie-star looks, never taking responsibility for his actions. And Lucy, the youngest, must find her own path in the shadow of her formidable siblings.

Baker Towers is a beautiful snapshot of a small town - of company houses and union squabbles; the boom and bust of the post-war years; the immigrant neighbourhoods of Swedetown, Little Italy and Polish Hill; the miners, undertakers, soldiers, firemen and families who populate the town and bring it vividly to life.

‘An elegant, elegiac multigenerational saga...Almost mythic in its ambition, somewhere between Oates and Updike country, and thoroughly satisfying.’ Kirkus Reviews

‘Haigh is an astute observer of human nature...In her writing and storytelling style, there are echoes of Anne Tyler’ Irish Examiner

About this edition

• Publisher: Perennial
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0060509422
• ISBN 13: 9780060509422
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 334