In her new novel, “Heat & Light,” Jennifer Haigh returns to the landscape of Western Pennsylvania and the fictional town of Bakerton, the setting for her two previous books “Baker Towers” and “News From Heaven.” Once booming with oil and coal money, Bakerton has collapsed. It is now a place where “every worthwhile thing has already happened.” Until a SUNY geologist determines there are natural gas deposits beneath Bakerton, and that the land may have one more “gift” to give. Ms. Haigh’s novel, however, is keen to remind readers that prosperity rarely comes without a price, especially in the case of hydraulic fracking.
Ecco ($26.99).
Fracking is a contentious issue, one in which few can even agree on the facts. For some it represents economic renewal, clean energy and freedom from the influence of foreign oil — progress. For others, fracking’s economic benefits are ethically dubious and limited to a corporate elite. Its methods represent an ecological catastrophe, one that touches lives on multiple levels, not least of which is our physical health — a disaster.
To navigate these competing views, Ms. Haigh provides an ensemble cast that ranges from residents of Bakerton to the leadership and employees of the drilling company — Dark Elephant — to research scientists and protest organizers. However, one family emerges as the focus of the novel: the Devlins.
Rich Devlin is a Gulf War veteran now living with his wife, Shelby, and their two children on land once farmed by his grandfather. Rich’s dream is to once again farm the land. He needs $50,000 to begin, a sum he just can’t seem to put together. When one of Dark Elephant’s people approaches him to sign a natural gas lease, he’s immediately interested. The man tells him, “There’s nothing to do. Sign the papers and wait for the check.”
The situation is, of course, much more complicated. He’s told, “We can drill … so far down you’ll never know we’re there.” In fact, the drilling crew cuts down nearly all the trees on Devlin’s property to make way for commercial vehicles and the drilling pad, the noise they create is unbearable, leading to bouts of insomnia for Rich, and there is the question of just what fracking is doing to the land he dreams of farming. It is not simply water being injected into the ground, but a cocktail of chemicals whose properties are kept carefully secret — almost, one character quips, like the formula for Coke.
When Shelby Devlin believes her daughter has been made sick by pollutants in the well water, Ms. Haigh opens up the novel’s the most compelling question: What are the medical dangers associated with fracking? The Devlins test the water and consult medical specialists in Pittsburgh. Statistics demonstrate a marked increase in unusual diseases and cancers in places where fracking is done. The problem is establishing a direct link between fracking and these illnesses.
To help conceptualize the issue, Ms. Haigh includes a plot line with characters who have become ill, or died, from exposure to radiation in the 1979 Three Mile Island accident. Like fracking practices and other invisible killers, it was impossible to know the extent to which people were affected by radiation. Yet more than 30 years later, few dispute the likely connection between exposure and a spike in miscarriages and cancers in the Middletown area. What, the novel asks, will the cultural consensus be on fracking three decades from now?
It’s an important question—one of many posed in “Heat & Light.” Written in the best tradition of the social novel — think Balzac, Zola, Dickens — Jennifer Haigh’s new work is an important contribution to the ongoing discussion of hydraulic fracking and its human consequences.
Jeffrey Condran is the author of the novel “Prague Summer” and co-founder of Braddock Avenue Books.
First Published: May 15, 2016, 4:00 a.m.