Reads like an emergency manual for activists battling environmental despoliation.
In this sequel to The Fracking War (2014), a small-town New York newspaper crusades against a thuggish energy company.
After losing his wife, Devon, to a drowning accident, journalist Jack Stafford returns from the island nation of Tonga to Horseheads, New York, with his 3-year-old son, Noah, and sister-in-law Cass. At the Horseheads Clarion newspaper, Jack takes the publishing reins back from editor Eli Gupta in time to dedicate his “Column One” editorials to the unsavory activities of Grand Energy Services. The company wants to store propane and natural gas in the salt caverns of Rockwell Valley, Pennsylvania, and build a pipeline through dairy farm country—with minimal input from the citizens affected most by the activities. Jack and his team of journalists use the paper to educate and warn the people of Rockwell Valley that fracking—which blasts water and various chemicals through shale to dislodge gas deposits—adds toxins to water supplies and increases the likelihood of earthquakes. There’s also the danger of stored gas leaking and exploding. Grand Energy, however, is run like a mob by CEO Luther Burnside. He’s got local politicians and judges in his pocket to smooth the way for his greedy agenda, which calls for shipping most of the gas overseas. Balancing the scales are the supposed eco-terrorists, the Wolverines, and a no-nonsense retired teacher named Alice McCallis. Former reporter Fitzgerald brings the weight of a long career to this series; his latest novel offers readers every angle they could ask for in the war between a small town and a company that would seek to subvert free speech and constitutional rights. Scenes with Jack and his staff are often a crash course in deft reportage, as when Jack warns a writer against skimping on scientific detail: “We are publishing stories and photos and videos about an environmental war that the public is losing,” he says. “I can’t have soldiers who don’t know how to fight.” Jack’s personal drama, including his traumatized son who can’t speak, ends up adding a positive human element to a narrative flush with despicable politics and chaos.
Reads like an emergency manual for activists battling environmental despoliation.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-1-63413-555-9
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Mill City Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 10, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
