What do readers think of News from Heaven by Jennifer Haigh? Write your own review.

This touching, insightful, and haunting book of short stories by Jennifer Haigh continues the story of Bakerton, Pennsylvania, a fictional coal-mining town, that she introduced in "Baker Towers: A Novel" and continues after "News From Heaven" in "Heat and Light: A Novel."

These are big stories about small town life, especially the secrets families keep and the secrets that are exposed.

Bakerton has fallen on hard times as the coal mines that employed the vast majority of the men have closed. In these stories we find out how some of the people have reinvented themselves when the only way of life they ever knew has ended. Some of the stories are heartbreaking, some are hopeful, and all are true to life. While each story focuses on a different family or individual, all of them explore themes common to all of us when change is forced upon us. A thin thread connects all 10 stories, making this book read more like a novel than a disparate collection of stories.

With finely-wrought characters and sophisticated storytelling, Haigh brilliantly captures a place, time, and people that are a crucial part of our very recent past.

These are blue collared short stories, the lives of working men and woman, all set in the mining town of Bakerton. It is helpful but not necessary to have read book:Baker Towers|72876, many of the characters are here in these short stories. Stories that span the time frame of the beginning of the mines operations. the dying of the mines and the slow death of a town, which at one time had employed over nine-hundred men. It is the story of those who went away, some successful, others who were not and came back. A nostalgic look at a community long gone, who once lived in company housing and shopped in company stores. A community who married in VFW halls, and helped each other out, a community that knew each others neighbors, which was sometimes good and sometimes not. I loved this grouping of stories, they are real, they have life.