Heat and Light
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Michael Rahhal
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Allyson Ryan
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By:
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Jennifer Haigh
About this listen
Acclaimed New York Times best-selling author Jennifer Haigh returns to the Pennsylvania town at the center of her iconic novel Baker Towers in this ambitious, achingly human story of modern America and the conflicting forces at its heart - a bold, moving drama of hope and desperation, greed and power, big business and small-town families.
Forty years ago, Bakerton coal fueled the country. Then the mines closed, and the town wore away like a bar of soap. Now Bakerton has been granted a surprise third act: It sits squarely atop the Marcellus Shale, a massive deposit of natural gas.
To drill or not to drill? Prison guard Rich Devlin leases his mineral rights to finance his dream of farming. He doesn't count on the truck traffic and nonstop noise, his brother's skepticism, or the paranoia of his wife, Shelby, who insists the water smells strange and is poisoning their frail daughter. Meanwhile his neighbors, organic dairy farmers Mack and Rena, hold out against the drilling - until a passionate environmental activist disrupts their lives.
Told through a cast of characters whose lives are increasingly bound by the opposing interests that underpin the national debate, Heat and Light depicts a community blessed and cursed by its natural resources. Soaring and ambitious, it zooms from drill rig to shareholders' meeting to the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor to the ruined landscape of the "strippins", haunting reminders of Pennsylvania's past energy booms. This is a dispatch from a forgotten America - a work of searing moral clarity from one of the finest writers of her generation, a courageous and necessary book.
©2016 Jennifer Haigh (P)2016 HarperCollins PublishersListeners also enjoyed...
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Inaccurate
- By CCB on 03-10-15
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The Turner House
- By: Angela Flournoy
- Narrated by: Adenrele Ojo
- Length: 12 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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The Turners have lived on Yarrow Street for over 50 years. Their house has seen 13 children grown and gone - and some returned; it has seen the arrival of grandchildren, the fall of Detroit's East Side, and the loss of a father. The house still stands despite abandoned lots, an embattled city, and the inevitable shift outward to the suburbs. But now, as ailing matriarch Viola finds herself forced to leave her home and move in with her eldest son, the family discovers that the house is worth just a 10th of its mortgage.
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The narrator's performance made the difference.
- By KT on 06-11-15
By: Angela Flournoy
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Lit
- A Memoir
- By: Mary Karr
- Narrated by: Mary Karr
- Length: 12 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Lit follows Mary Karr's descent into the inferno of alcoholism and madness - and her astonishing resurrection. Karr's longing for a solid family seems secure when her marriage to a handsome, Shakespeare-quoting poet produces a son they adore. But she can't outrun her apocalyptic past. She drinks herself into the same numbness that nearly devoured her charismatic but troubled mother, reaching the brink of suicide. A hair-raising stint in "The Mental Marriott" awakens her to the possibility of joy, and leads her to an unlikely faith.
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Finally! One for the "Win" column
- By Kim on 03-22-10
By: Mary Karr
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May We Be Forgiven
- By: A. M. Homes
- Narrated by: Andy Paris
- Length: 20 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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May We Be Forgiven, a darkly comic novel of 21st-century domestic life, stars Harold Silver, a historian who's always been jealous of his successful brother, George. But when the hot-tempered George is institutionalized for committing a violent act, Harold finds himself comforting his brother's wife and children. What follows is a scathing examination of a family so fractured it may never be whole again.
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Give this one a try!
- By JWB on 02-13-13
By: A. M. Homes
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The Last Picture Show
- Thalia Trilogy, Book 1
- By: Larry McMurtry
- Narrated by: John Randolph Jones
- Length: 8 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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An almost-true story about a small town in Texas that ought to exist if it doesn’t, with characters like Sam the Lion, the delectable Jacy, and Ruth Popper, the coach’s wife. Set in a small, dusty, Texas town, The Last Picture Show introduced the characters of Jacy, Duane, and Sonny: teenagers stumbling toward adulthood, discovering the beguiling mysteries of sex and the even more baffling mysteries of love.
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Not very good
- By Randall on 07-02-17
By: Larry McMurtry
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The One-in-a-Million Boy
- By: Monica Wood
- Narrated by: Chris Ciulla
- Length: 10 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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For years, guitarist Quinn Porter has been on the road, chasing gig after gig, largely absent to his twice-ex-wife Belle and their odd, Guinness records-obsessed son. When the boy dies suddenly, Quinn seeks forgiveness for his paternal shortcomings by completing the requirements for one of his son's unfinished Boy Scout badges. For seven Saturdays Quinn does yard work for Ona Vitkus, the spry 104-year-old Lithuanian immigrant the boy had visited weekly.
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Loved it
- By Justin on 10-20-16
By: Monica Wood
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Mislaid
- A Novel
- By: Nell Zink
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 8 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Stillwater College in Virginia, 1966. Freshman Peggy, an ingénue with literary pretensions, falls under the spell of Lee, a blue-blooded poet and professor, and they begin an ill-advised affair that results in an unplanned pregnancy and marriage. The couple are mismatched from the start - she's a lesbian, he's gay - but it takes a decade of emotional erosion before Peggy runs off with their three-year-old daughter, leaving their nine-year-old son behind.
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Misbegotten, mishandled, misfired novel
- By Julie W. Capell on 02-07-16
By: Nell Zink
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Stories I'd Tell in Bars
- By: Jen Lancaster
- Narrated by: Jen Lancaster, John Fletcher
- Length: 8 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Unfiltered. Unapologetic. Older, but not wiser, Lancaster goes back to basics in this hilarious essay collection about everything from taking community policing classes to accidentally getting high with her waiter after a fancy dinner. These are the tales she'd tell if she met you in a bar... if she weren't too lazy to put on pants and go to a bar. Offering advice ranging from how to remain happily married to a man who refuses to blow his damn nose already to not creating An Incident at the cheese counter during an attempt at Whole30, she's you, only louder.
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self absorbed
- By D D H on 06-15-19
By: Jen Lancaster
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The Wangs vs. the World
- By: Jade Chang
- Narrated by: Nancy Wu
- Length: 14 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Charles Wang is mad at America. A brash, lovable immigrant businessman who built a cosmetics empire and made a fortune, he's just been ruined by the financial crisis. Now all Charles wants is to get his kids safely stowed away so that he can go to China and attempt to reclaim his family's ancestral lands - and his pride. Outrageously funny and full of charm, The Wangs vs. the World is an entirely fresh look at what it means to belong in America - and how going from glorious riches to (still name-brand) rags brings one family together in a way money never could.
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Spectacular
- By Barbara on 10-11-16
By: Jade Chang
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Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules (Unabridged Selections)
- By: Edited by David Sedaris
- Narrated by: David Sedaris, Mary-Louise Parker, Cherry Jones
- Length: 2 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules is a collection of short stories, some classic, others impending, selected and introduced by David Sedaris.
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Great stories but only 5 of 17 are included
- By Terri Kirk on 07-13-12
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Baltimore Blues
- Tess Monaghan, Book 1
- By: Laura Lippman
- Narrated by: Deborah Hazlett
- Length: 9 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Unemployed at 29, Tess Monaghan is willing to take any freelance job to pay the rent—including a bit of unorthodox snooping for her rowing buddy, Darryl "Rock" Paxton. In a city where someone is murdered almost every day, attorney Michael Abramowitz's death should be just another statistic. But the slain lawyer's notoriety—and his noontime trysts with Rock's fiancée—make the case front page news...and point to Rock as the likely murderer. But trying to prove her friend's innocence could prove costly to Tess.
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I'm on #8 - This series is almost unique
- By connie on 02-19-12
By: Laura Lippman
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Our Story Begins
- New and Selected Stories
- By: Tobias Wolff
- Narrated by: Anthony Heald
- Length: 13 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Wolff here returns with fresh revelations - about biding one's time, or experiencing first love, or burying one's mother - that come to a variety of characters in circumstances at once everyday and extraordinary. A retired Marine enrolls in college while her son trains for Iraq. A lawyer takes a difficult deposition. An American in Rome indulges the Gypsy who's picked his pocket.
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Great
- By chris on 04-11-08
By: Tobias Wolff
What listeners say about Heat and Light
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Dreamjojo
- 11-29-18
A book with unfulfilled potential
The description of this book, with the promise of different perspectives of people involved around fracking, seemed really interesting. Unfortunately the book didn't live up to it's promises.
The Good: interesting characters that are well developed. The overall storyline is reasonably interesting.
The Bad: There are chapters devoted to deep background on the characters that do nothing to advance the story, further develop the characters, or make commentary on energy which caused the story to drag for long periods of time. Some of the storylines end very predictably.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Amazon Customer
- 07-31-16
Complex,layered story of rural life
Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?
Yes. This is a deftly handled sympathetic portrait of the complexities and difficulties of rural life in America layered with interesting family dynamics and environmental issues.
Who was your favorite character and why?
The Devlin brothers. They had a flawed but deep relationship. Excellent portrayal
What does Michael Rahhal and Allyson Ryan bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?
I enjoyed thesmmooth rotation of believable accents from Texas to Latino to rural Pennsylvania; the rotation from sweet farm wife to angry attorney to Texas roughnecks to prison inmates.
Any additional comments?
This is a masterful blending of story with character development and plot as well as environmental concerns translted to a local level showing the way environmental issues affect every day lives. Well done.
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- DwightDorsey
- 07-25-16
quick ending
The story branched into a wide array of unnecessary side streets that lead to nothing. Seemed like a setup for a tv series.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Susan Gardner Bowers
- 07-10-16
Sigh
I am getting tired of books that have a political point of view (even if I agree) and construct a fairly lame story on which the opinions hang. Are you listening, Barkskins? Ms Haight is a great writer but she's sold herself short on the one. In addition, the narrator mispronunces words. My current fave? Macadam with the accent woefully misplaced.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Theresa Moff
- 10-23-16
Too many subplots.
There were way too many subplots and no real identifiable main plot. The story jumped around from character to character and to different time points without any clear connection or reason to go there. The characters were mostly stereotyped and poorly developed. I live in the Marcellus Shale area and lived through the good and bad of the gas boom. I am not sure that someone who did not have this experience would be able to follow or understand the dynamics.
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- S. McNutt
- 07-08-16
Ambivalent POV
I was mostly unmoved by the book which trains a shrugging point of view on a uniformly flawed cast of characters whose thoughts and motives are devoid of any sense of virtue, or anything beyond a craven short-sightedness. It is a book without heroes or villains, which is clearly an intentional decision to enhance its realism. Normally, that's a choice I appreciate but for whatever reason I ended up feeling like every character was a little dumb. There is a clever hint regarding the smell of grape candy that undermines the perceived innocence of the mother, but it only added to the sense of reading about a cast of fools. That's fine except given the subject of fracking the ambivalence it invoked bled over into fracking itself, which borders on the amoral. A good novel shouldn't read like an op-Ed but neither should it conclude with a ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
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