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Loved this book, rich characters - resonated with things I've experienced. I'm going to pass it along to my mom, who I think will enjoy it also. I'm now reading her other book, Mrs. Kimble. LOVING that one too.
Rich with detail and compassion. Love the characters and Haigh's gift of bringing them to life with words.
This author is an excellant writer. She could probably write about the weather and it would be difficult to put the book down. In this book, she is following the demise of a coal town and how it affects the various families. Her characters are likeable and believable. Not my favorite by her, but still better than most books that I have read. I would compare her writing to a cross between Anne Tyler and Jodie Picoult, which is high praise indeed.
I could not put this book down !!!! Great book
Saga of the Novak family in the '40s. Great love story.
Good book about the 1940s during WW2.
Wonderful characters that draw you in. Great Writing. Loved it!
I was surprised at how interesting this book is. The characters are interesting and the way the book flows from each of their perspectives makes it fairly engrossing.
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. A National Bestseller
Beautifully written. Couldn't put it down.