News from Heaven - by Jennifer Haigh (Paperback)

About the Book

In News from Heaven, Jennifer Haigh--bestselling author of Faith and The Condition--returns to the territory of her acclaimed novel Baker Towers with a collection of short stories set in and around the fictionalized coal-mining town of Bakerton, Pennsylvania.

Exploring themes of restlessness, regret, redemption and acceptance, Jennifer Haigh depicts men and women of different generations shaped by dreams and haunted by disappointments.

Janet Maslin of the New York Times has called Haigh's Bakerton stories "utterly, entrancingly alive on the page," comparable to Richard Russo's Empire Falls.

Book Synopsis

In News from Heaven, Jennifer Haigh--bestselling author of Faith and The Condition--returns to the territory of her acclaimed novel Baker Towers with a collection of short stories set in and around the fictionalized coal-mining town of Bakerton, Pennsylvania.

Exploring themes of restlessness, regret, redemption and acceptance, Jennifer Haigh depicts men and women of different generations shaped by dreams and haunted by disappointments.

Janet Maslin of the New York Times has called Haigh's Bakerton stories "utterly, entrancingly alive on the page," comparable to Richard Russo's Empire Falls.

From the Back Cover

Jennifer Haigh returns to the vividly imagined world of Bakerton, Pennsylvania, a coal-mining town that has been rocked by decades of painful transition. From its heyday during two world wars through its slow decline, Bakerton is a town that refuses to give up gracefully, binding succeeding generations to the place that made them. With a revolving cast of characters, these stories explore how our roots--the families and places in which we are raised--shape the people we eventually become.

Review Quotes

". . . a book with an arresting emotional power greater than the sum of its parts. . . each story in News from Heaven is astounding. . . ." - Kansas City Star
"Beautifully written and deeply moving. . . This is a masterly collection. . . ." - Library Journal (starred review)
"Fans of Elizabeth Strout's Pulitzer Prize-winning "Olive Kitteridge" will succumb to the lure of Jennifer Haigh's latest book, News from Heaven. Haigh's latest book, like Strout's, is a series of interconnected stories that come together and tap into a wide range of human emotions." - Chicago Tribune
"Haigh has a fine eye for how time works on characters' theories about themselves.... Life may punish these characters, but the writing itself always accords them due respect. Readers of Haigh's most recent novel, Faith, about a priest accused of abusing a child, will recognize this rare degree of writerly fair-mindedness.... Haigh, whose first book won the PEN/Hemingway Award, has a sure grip on her characters and a belief in place as a determining factor in the shapes of our lives." - New York Times Book Review
"Haigh has a fine eye for how time works on characters' theories about themselves.... Haigh, whose first book won the PEN/Hemingway Award, has a sure grip on her characters and a belief in place as a determining factor in the shapes of our lives." - New York Times Book Review
"Jennifer Haigh's stories rove across time and cultures as easily as they render the tendernesses and longings and hardscrabble deprivations of home. NEWS FROM HEAVEN is well-named, given that its unsentimental compassion and observational acuity. . . is just what we need right now." - Jim Shepard, author of Like You'd Understand, Anyway
"This collection of short stories shows depth, understanding and compassion. . . . Haigh's narratives are beautifully realized stories of heartbreak, of qualified love, and of economic as well as personal depression." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Outstanding... News From Heaven fits quite comfortably in the company of the hybrid novel-in-stories made so popular by predecessors such as Jhumpa Lahiri...and Elizabeth Strout...For Haigh, this small town is a large canvas, one filled in with precise, poignant strokes." - Washington Post
"A vibrant, thought-provoking, profoundly readable contribution to the genre. . . . Each of these ten linked stories represents a distinct, shining example of Haigh's remarkable gifts for lyricism, psychological insight, and stealth humor." - Boston Globe
"Haigh skillfully explores a community and their conflicting sentiments of family and responsibility against desires for a future beyond the narrow scope of their hometown." - Publishers Weekly
"The characters in Jennifer Haigh's NEWS FROM HEAVEN are so vividly drawn, the inner lives revealed so deftly, with such intelligence and sympathy, that fictional Bakerton, Pennsylvania, takes on the additional weight of, say, Winesburg, Ohio." - Richard Russo, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Empire Falls
"Jennifer Haigh has accomplished what James Joyce did in Dubliners and Sherwood Anderson in Winesburg, Ohio: render a place with such exactitude the landscape, character, and fate are inextricably linked. One of America's finest novelists, Haigh is now one of our finest short story writers as well." - bestselling author Ron Rash
"An uplifting and radiant book." - Janet Maslin, New York Times
"Elegant stories. . . . Haigh uses well-timed plot twists to infuse them with bright new energy." - People
"The beauty of NEWS FROM HEAVEN, Jennifer Haigh's new collection of linked stories, has everything to do with the Pennsylvania coal town she calls Bakerton, a seedbed of ambition and heartbreak. From the pretty, young Polish-American housekeeper whose desires flatline on Manhattan's West Side to the widowed ex-schoolteacher who learns at last that marriage has a steep learning curve, bound to the place they recognize, willing or not, as home." - More magazine
"Haigh has a gift for creating believable characters of all kinds and placing them into realistic--often heartbreaking--situations. A must read for fans of Baker Towers and a good addition to all short-story collections." - Booklist