Author: Jennifer Haigh
Synopsis: Baker Towers is an intimate exploration of love and family set in a western Pennsylvania coal town in the years following World War II. Bakerton is a town of company houses and church festivals, union squabbles and firemen's parades. Its ball club leads the coal company leagues. Its neighborhoods are Little Italy, Swedetown and Polish Hill.
Genre: Historical Fiction / Family Saga
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishing, 2005
Pages: 368
My Rating: Highly Recommend
For the five Novak children, the forties are a decade of tragedy, excitement and stunning change. George comes home from the war determined to leave Bakerton behind and finds the task impossible. Dorothy is a fragile beauty hooked on romance. Brilliant Joyce holds the family together, bitterly aware of the life she might have had elsewhere, while her brother Sandy sails through life on looks and charm. At the center of it all is Lucy, the volatile baby, devouring the family's attention and developing a bottomless appetite for love.
Baker Towers is both a family saga and a love letter to our industrial past, to the men and women known as the Greatest Generation; to the vibrant small-town life of America's Rust Belt when it was still shiny and new.
Review: I have yet to read a family saga that I didn't enjoy. The author did a great job of tying the characters' lives together, and without giving the reader too much information in which to get lost.
It is unfortunate that the author did not delve more deeply into Rose, as a widow and a mother. The reader sees her only through the eyes of her children.
I wish the author would have noted the years of a particular chapter or section at the beginning. There were plenty of clues throughout the chapter, style of dress, who the President was at the time, etc, but I missed that reference.
This book is set in a small coal mining town in Pennsylvania and captures the growth, height, and decline of such towns. Having grown up in small town Pennsylvania, I could relate. I also understood the characters' desires to leave their town, and the reasons they had to return.
While the conclusion could leave some readers hanging, others will appreciate the simple ending. Check this out and decide for yourself.
Review: I have yet to read a family saga that I didn't enjoy. The author did a great job of tying the characters' lives together, and without giving the reader too much information in which to get lost.
This book is set in a small coal mining town in Pennsylvania and captures the growth, height, and decline of such towns. Having grown up in small town Pennsylvania, I could relate. I also understood the characters' desires to leave their town, and the reasons they had to return.
While the conclusion could leave some readers hanging, others will appreciate the simple ending. Check this out and decide for yourself.
No Rating No Review? Those are my favorite parts!
ReplyDeleteYou beat me to it. I updated with a review.
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