Baker Towers: A Novel

by Jennifer Haigh
William Morrow, January 2005
352 pages

Rights sold:
*Dutch to Arena
*French to Michel Lafon
*German to Goldmann
*Italian to Il Saggiatore
*UK to HarperCollins UK

A stunning follow-up to her bestselling debut,
Mrs. Kimble, Jennifer Haigh returns with Baker Towers, a compelling story of love and loss in a western Pennsylvania mining town in the years after World War II Bakerton is a company town built on coal, a town of church festivals and ethnic neighborhoods, hunters’ breakfasts and firemen’s parades. Its children are raised in company houses -- three rooms upstairs, three rooms downstairs. Its ball club leads the coal company league. The twelve Baker mines offer good union jobs, and the looming black piles of mine dirt don’t bother anyone. Called Baker Towers, they are local landmarks, clear evidence that the mines are booming. Baker Towers mean good wages and meat on the table, two weeks’ paid vacation and presents under the Christmas tree.
The mines were not named for Bakerton; Bakerton was named for the mines. This is an important distinction. It explains the order of things.
Born and raised on Bakerton’s Polish Hill, the five Novak children come of age during wartime, a thrilling era when the world seems on the verge of changing forever. The oldest, Georgie, serves on a minesweeper in the South Pacific and glimpses life beyond Bakerton, a promising future he is determined to secure at all costs. His sister Dorothy, a fragile beauty, takes a job in Washington, D.C., and finds she is unprepared for city life. Brilliant Joyce longs to devote herself to something of consequence but instead becomes the family’s keystone, bitterly aware of the opportunities she might have had elsewhere. Sandy sails through life on looks and charm, and Lucy, the volatile baby, devours the family’s attention and develops a bottomless appetite for love.
Baker Towers is a family saga and a love story, a hymn to a time and place long gone, to America’s industrial past and the men and women we now call the Greatest Generation. This is a feat of imagination from an extraordinary new voice in American fiction, a writer of enormous power and skill.

Set in a rural Pennsylvania mining town, BAKER TOWERS opens during World War II, and tells the story of the Novaks, a tight-knit family whose lives revolve around the mine where their father works. The post-War world is a different one, shiny and new and full of great promise, and as the outside world changes, so do the fates and fortunes of the Novak children. George, the oldest son, returns from the war determined to leave Bakerton behind and start a new life elsewhere. His sister Dorothy, a fragile beauty, finds the outside world too much for her delicate soul to bear. Their younger brother Sandy meanwhile sails through life on his good looks and charm, while baby Lucy, the adorable little sister, is always the center of attention. Holding them all together, with the force of her love and determination, is Joyce, the sensible and talented middle sister, who forfeits her own future for the sake of what she thinks is best for the family.

Jennifer Haigh was hailed as "the next Great American author" (Fort Worth Star Telegram) after her debut novel, MRS KIMBLE, was published in 2003. The Washington Post compared MRS KIMBLE to Michael Cunningham’s "The Hours," and Kirkus Reviews proclaimed "the measured prose and care for detail show a promising talent." MRS KIMBLE was the winner of the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award, America’s best-known prize for a distinguished first book of fiction, and was nominated for "Booksense Book of the Year."

In this, her second novel, Haigh more than lives up to the promise critics observed in MRS KIMBLE. In BAKER TOWERS, she paints a compelling chronicle of the tragedies and fortunes that define and bond a single family. Her achievement is all the more extraordinary in that she uses the everyday things of our lives, the minutia of daily life, to paint a universal and profound portrait of human life as it is lived.

In addition to receiving wide acclaim in the United States, MRS KIMBLE was licensed in eight countries overseas: UK/ HARPER UK; Holland/ARENA; Italy/IL SAGGIATORE; France/MICHEL LAFON; Poland/MUZA; Serbia/LAGUNA; Japan/RANDOM HOUSE KODANSHA; Bulgaria/EMAS/GLOBUS. Please see below for more praise and acclaim for MRS KIMBLE.


A stunning - STUNNING - review by Janet Maslin appears in today’s New York Times!! Our phones have not stopped ringing all morning. The New York scouts are all alerting their clients.

NEW YORK TIMES,
January 13, 2005

Women Trying to Find Their Way in a Dying Coal Town
By JANET MASLIN

In earnest praise of Jennifer Haigh’s novel "Baker Towers," the book’s publisher cites a few talking points. Here we have a novel that addresses the power of love, the strength of family, the changing roles of women and the blending of different ethnic groups in small-town society. That list is useful only in its blandness: it could not offer a sharper contrast to the living, breathing organism that is Ms. Haigh’s captivating book.

"Baker Towers" tells the rich, enveloping story of one Polish-Italian family in the small Pennsylvania coal-mining town of Bakerton - where the sardonically named "towers" of the title are two huge heaps of sulfurous waste from the mines. When it comes to employment, Baker Brothers, the mine-owning company that dates back to the 1880’s, is the only game in town.
"The mines were not named for Bakerton; Bakerton was named for the mines," Ms. Haigh writes simply at the start of this effortlessly haunting story. "This is an important distinction. It explains the order of things."

Although this novel abounds with satisfyingly real and vivid individuals (Ms. Haigh is a coal miner’s granddaughter), the order of things remains its unwavering central focus. In certain satisfying ways, "Baker Towers" is steeped in the familiar.
The one member of the large Novak family who makes an upwardly mobile escape is George, who marries a wealthy socialite. Of course, she is "slim as a whippet" and comes from Philadelphia’s Main Line. "They’ll love you," George tells Marion as he prepares to bring her for what will be her one and only visit to Bakerton. "How could they not?"

This is the kind of book in which Marion, whose only culinary talents involve opening wine bottles and going to restaurants, cannot possibly be welcome. "Mrs. Novak, George tells me your family is Italian," Marion says, by way of making small talk. There’s something no less tragicomically solid in the way garlic-scented Mama Rose stares at her son with a look that says, "What kind of girl you marry, she don’t know
how to fry an egg?"

Ms. Haigh packs the book with a wide spectrum of social and domestic roles for the female characters. For most of the men in Bakerton, life is centered underground, governed by hard work and rigorous routine, experienced at a perpetual temperature of 50 degrees. There are inevitable trajectories for coal-mining stories, and "Baker Towers" doesn’t fight them. Narrative options do not include improved health and
happiness for the miners or an accident-free environment on the job.

Life offers more distinct fears and frustrations for the book’s women.
With much of "Baker Towers" unfolding against the backdrop of World War II, and later amid a postwar work force jolted by the influx of returning soldiers, the assorted Novak sisters are caught between eagerness to escape Bakerton and the scarcity of real alternatives elsewhere. But they try to get away. The only woman who has no chance of leaving home is Rose, who becomes a miner’s widow just as the book
begins.

Still rooted to the company-owned house that was allotted to her late husband, living in a neighborhood called Polish Hill despite her Italian heritage and habits, Rose brings up her daughters among classmates who will be doomed to grim prospects. "Their hard lives - the brutish husband, the endless succession of babies - seemed to swallow them completely; and those, everyone knew, were the success stories," Ms.
Haigh writes, with an unflinching eye on how this tightly knit world works.

But here is an author whose uncommonly good debut novel, "Mrs. Kimble,"envisioned three different women by that name, all wives of the same trickster, Ken Kimble. Similarly, fate rolls the dice for each of the Novak women in "Baker Towers." Joyce is the family martinet: when she takes a military job during wartime, her absence provides respite for the Novaks back home. Then Joyce returns with a vengeance, becoming the rock of the family with the advent of progress (Rose burns the polenta
for the first time when the coal stove is switched for an electric one)and the decline of Rose’s health.

Dorothy, who does office work in Washington for a time, is the dreamy one, beautiful enough to bear a resemblance to Hedy Lamarr. (Some of the Novaks are dark and voluptuous, like their mother; some are primly blond.) Like the story’s other characters, she is shaped as much by dashed hopes as by fulfilled ones. And when her life begins to sour, the shift is barely noticeable. At first Dorothy just looks "as though she were listening for sounds in the next room." Then, in an unraveling that
Ms. Haigh describes with especially memorable grace, Dorothy winds up back in the inescapable family fold.

The book shifts effortlessly among the experiences of these two daughters and those of a third, much younger sister, Lucy. The ties that bind them also extend to the two Novak brothers, George and the handsome, mysterious Sandy. (How does he support himself as "the best-dressed fry cook in Los Angeles"? And Ms. Haigh, beyond being an
expert natural storyteller with an acute sense of her characters’ humanity, sustains a clear sense of Bakerton’s vitality, or lack thereof. Bakerton is a place where the taxidermists are busiest in December, stuffing deer heads for holiday gifts. It’s a place where a sign at the local gas station reads: "Tough times never last. Tough
people do."

Like Richard Russo’s "Empire Falls," Bakerton is a place in transition.
"The town wore away like a bar of soap," Ms. Haigh writes. "Each year, smaller and less distinct, the letters of its name fading. The thing it had been became harder to discern." But this book has the heart to end, credibly and unsentimentally, on a note of rebirth. And Bakerton is utterly, entrancingly alive on the page even as it is supposed to be fading away.

"Forget postmodern alienation: Reading Baker Towers is the literary equivalent of rifling through a thrift shop’s rack of 1940s house dresses. Here is a novel that feels vintage, but in the very best way... in prose rich in sensual detail, [Jennifer Haigh] weaves the multigenerational saga... With the fiercely observed Baker Towers, Haigh proves herself a fine storyteller, one with as much staying power as her characters. Mining her own rural Pennsylvania roots, she has created a heartfelt-and heart-rendering-tale." - People Magazine, Critic’s Choice, Four Stars



RAVE REVIEWS FOR BAKER TOWERS:

"Haigh has constructed a hypnotic portrait of a coal-country mining town that spans a quarter century and captures wistfully the demise of the culture... [Haigh] is capable of creating flesh and blood characters are authentic and idiosyncratic... The novel is constructed around consciously small moments of ordinary domesticity... In page after page Haigh demonstrates her profound ability to illuminate the personal encounters and minor revelations that make up a life, while offering a crisp, insightful snapshot of a particular place and time." - Boston Globe

"Jennifer Haigh gets a memorable grip on family and locale in her vivid novel Baker Towers... It’s hard to escape... the characterizations and the texture Haigh conjures so effectively carry this largely superb novel. Haigh’s tone is pitch-perfect, her grasp of psychology, masterly. The way Joyce Novak develops, overcoming the chill in her loins to connect with the warmth of her heart, is but one example of a command equal to those of Richard Russo and Anne Tyler, novelists who also examine the large issues that roil small towns. Baker Towers isn’t perfect, but it sure is close." - Denver Post

"[Baker Towers] turns out rather cheerily, like Dickens... [Haigh has] established that she’s a superior writer of the scene, the small moment that proves to be the pebble before the landslide. She also has a convincing ear for her period... Haigh is a skilled portraitist... The loss of this mining family’s world is a poignant story, and as Haigh writes it, it’s worth reading." - Boston Magazine

"An elegant, elegiac multigenerational saga about a small coal-mining community in western Pennsylvania that shows how talented she really is... Fast on the heels of her PEN/Hemingway-winning... first novel (Mrs. Kimble, 2003), Haigh turns a careful, loving eye on the sociology of the town of Bakerton... Almost mythic in its ambition, somewhere between Oates and Updike country, and thoroughly satisfying." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"Haigh creates a real sense of a community and brings her mining town to life through a large cast of minor characters... Baker Towers is a novel possessing a rare, quiet power to evoke a time long past and the character of the people who lived then." - Booklist (starred review)

"[Haigh] writes convincingly of family and small town relations, as well as of the intractable frustrations of American poverty... Haigh’s solid story-telling could make this a big seller."- Publishers Weekly

"Jennifer Haigh stakes a claim for a major breakout."- Publishers Weekly

"In her second novel (after Mrs. Kimble), PEN/Hemingway Award winner Haigh uses evocative prose to create a picture of a company town--and of the human condition--that is both accurate and moving."- Library Journal

"Last year, Jennifer Haigh impressed readers with her brilliant debut, Mrs. Kimble. With her second novel, Haigh does it again--differently, but just as well." - BookPage





From Publishers Weekly
The second novel by the author of the award-winning Mrs. Kimble depicts life in a postwar Pennsylvania mining town and continues Haigh’s exploration of the hardships of women’s lives. In the town of Bakerton, dominated by the towers of the title (made of slowly combusting piles of scrap coal), poor families live in ethnic enclaves of company houses. Italian Rose Novak broke with tradition by marrying a Polish man, but he dies in the book’s first chapter, and Rose and her five children struggle through the years that follow. The oldest son, Georgie, returns from WWII and avoids the mining life by marrying the posh, cynical daughter of a wealthy Philadelphia store owner. Rose’s daughter Dorothy gets a wartime job in glamorous Washington but breaks down and returns to Bakerton, while capable daughter Joyce, who joins the military just as the war ends, comes home to take care of her ailing mother, resenting Georgie and Sandy, the handsome youngest brother, who escape town. Only Rose and Lucy, the awkward youngest daughter, are content with things as they are. The story climaxes with a disaster at the mine, which affects each of the Novak children. Haigh’s prose never soars, but she writes convincingly of family and smalltown relations, as well as of the intractable frustrations of American poverty.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
*Starred Review* Haigh’s second novel, following the glowing Mrs. Kimble (2003), is set in Bakerton, a mining town in post-World World II Pennsylvania. Haigh’s focus is the Novak family, particularly the five children being raised by their Italian mother after their Polish father drops dead. All five make attempts to escape Bakerton at one point or another; some are successful, others are not. George, a veteran of WW II, neglects his Bakerton fiancee and marries a cold socialite. Dorothy goes to the nation’s capital to work, but a nervous breakdown brings her home. Brilliant, cold Joyce thinks her future lies with the military, but she is sorely disappointed. Sandy is the golden son who escapes to dubious success. And Lucy is the youngest, who finds herself in college despite the nagging feeling that she never wanted to leave home in the first place. Haigh creates a real sense of a community and brings her mining town to life through a large cast of minor characters who pass in and out of the Novaks’ lives. The mines that the town is built upon cannot be forgotten either, even as their time comes, disastrously, to pass. Baker Towers^B is a novel possessing a rare, quiet power to evoke a time long past and the character of the people who lived then. Kristine Huntley
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"An elegant, elegiac multigenerational saga... Almost mythic in its ambition, somewhere between Oates and Updike country, and thoroughly satisfying."

New York Times
"The living, breathing organism that is Haigh’s captivating book… [is an] effortlessly haunting story… [Haigh is] an expert natural storyteller."



Amazon.com
Jennifer Haigh’s first novel, Mrs. Kimble, was an auspicious debut about three women who marry the same man--consecutively--and their ability to kid themselves about who he is, and, more to the point, who they are. It won the PEN/Hemingway Award, given annually for best first fiction. Haigh has beaten the sophomore slump with another page-turner: Baker Towers. The action, such as it is, takes place in post-World War II Bakerton, a Pennsylvania mining town. "...[T]he town’s most famous landmark, known locally as the Towers, two looming piles of mine waste. They are forty feet high and growing... The mines were not named for Bakerton; Bakerton was named for the mines. This is an important distinction. It explains the order of things. Haigh lets us know this on page two, setting the backdrop for the family drama of the Novaks.
The story begins with the death of Stanley Novak, wife of Rose and father of Georgie, Dorothy, Joyce, Lucy, and Sandy. This is an Italian-Polish marriage, tolerated, but a break with the town’s tradition. The personality, temperament and needs of all five Novaks are made clear to us by their choices--although they are not always clear to the Novaks. Their interaction, with each other and their community, is the stuff of the novel. Life revolves around the mines, the Church, gossip, and sports. Many times throughout the book it seems that Haigh is using a camera rather than a pen, so perfectly does she create a scene for the reader.
Georgie struggles to get away from Bakerton after his military service by going to Philadelphia and marrying the boss’s daughter, a decision he lives to regret. Dorothy gets a job in D.C., but never really fits into the scene. A breakdown brings her home for good. Joyce joins the military, is appalled by the way she is treated, and hastens home to care for her ailing mother. Lucy, overweight and unwelcome with the "in" crowd, longs to be Fire Queen, the pinnacle of acceptance in Bakerton. Sandy, handsome and unreliable, leaves for big city life, finds it, and comes home periodically to hide out.
Haigh has captured these people’s lives as they play out, more acted upon than acting. None of the Novaks is self-reflective; the girls accept the status quo, the boys escape and find that they have taken themselves with them. A foreshadowing of the changes that will take place is symbolized by a horrific mine explosion at the end of the book. This life that Haigh has so carefully described will soon disappear forever, for good or ill, but she has illuminated its current reality with a sure hand. --Valerie Ryan


Jennifer Haigh is the author of the critically acclaimed Mrs. Kimble, which won the PEN/Hemingway Award for outstanding first fiction. Born and raised in Barnesboro, Pennsylvania, she is a graduate of Dickinson College and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Her short stories have appeared in Good Housekeeping, the Hartford Courant, Alaska Quarterly Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. She lives on Boston’s South Shore.