MOBILITY

An examination of the myriad costs of delivering the “energy” needed to power everyday life through the story of one American woman.

Bunny Glenn, the disaffected teenage daughter of a U.S. foreign service officer, floats through life and her father’s relocations in a state of adolescent ennui and annoyance. Kiesling begins her account of Bunny’s slow journey to a level of heightened awareness of petropolitics in 1998 with her father’s posting in Baku, Azerbaijan, a hotbed of political and oil industry machinations in the wake of the breakup of the Soviet Union. While primarily concerned about her appearance and prime-time American soap operas translated into foreign languages for worldwide consumption, Bunny manages to absorb enough about the oil industry through osmosis that it comes as no surprise when, years later, an adult Bunny (who eventually prefers to be called Elizabeth) finds herself climbing the corporate ladder of a small, family-owned energy company in Texas. Through a lens focused on Bunny, Kiesling is able to deliver an examination of the roles of (among other factors) class, gender, politics, and economics in the development of the world’s addictive reliance upon fossil fuels. Bunny, who has been privy to rumors and stories of industry corruption and avarice, grapples with the need to make a life (and a living) for herself in an arena filled with self-interest and increasingly devastating environmental danger. All the while, she contends with concerns shared with women finding their ways in the corporate world and the world of self-fulfillment. Designer bags, Korean skin care lines, nail polish colors, and the resolution of a long-held sexual attraction take turns as signals of Bunny’s evolving persona in this artful demonstration of how micro decisions have macro results.

The personal is patently political in Kiesling’s call to environmental arms.