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FRACTURES

Lamar Herrin

Epic environmental drama-- in which a patriarch must decide the fate of his land and his family.

For generations, the Joyner family has maintained one hundred acres of pure countryside in northern New York State. Frank, a preservationist at heart, lives on the land and walks its forests and farm fields almost daily. But his love and respect for nature is challenged by more commercial interests of his heirs who see an opportunity to turn the natural beauty of their property into cash. Under the Marcellus Shale, these layers of rocks layered thousands of years ago by receding glaciers, there may be reservoirs of natural gas. Drilling companies are already wooing Frank's neighbors with irresistible amounts of money, and invading the region with their big-wheel trucks, sky-high derricks, contaminated water, and industrial accidents. As the head of a family with divided interests, Frank has to decide whether the controversial hydrofracking process will bring them closer to their common goal. Emotional and elegant, this literary family story conveys the rich atmosphere of a land being torn apart, and a family struggling to hold together. Lamar Herrin is the author of six books, including the novel House of the Deaf and most recently the memoir, Romancing Spain. His short stories have appeared in the New Yorker, Harper's, Epoch, and Paris Review, which awarded him its Aga Kahn fiction prize. He is also the recipient of a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, winner of the Associated Writing Program's Award for the Novel, and is professor emeritus of creative writing and contemporary literature at Cornell University.

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Book Published 2013-11-01 by Thomas Dunne / St. Martin's

Comments

"Lamar Herrin's Fractures is a brilliantly conceived and executed novel that illustrates how coping with familial dysfunctions can help us understand and deal with the more deadly dysfunctions of society. Here's one of my favorite writers at his finest."

"The best literary fiction is often about families, and Lamar Herrin has always written superbly about them. Throughout his career, Herrin's insights into the complex emotional transactions of family life have just kept getting deeper. Fractures is his best novel; an aching, beautiful book."

A deeply moving novel that is highly recommended for fans of literary fiction.

"Fractures takes as its frame the new economic reality of Marcellus Shale drilling in the same manner that Jane Smiley's A Thousand Acres employed the rise of factory farming. With great depth and generosity, Lamar Herrin shows us an American family-and the American soul-under pressure."

"With a voice as clear and kind as William Maxwell's, and an acuity of vision as penetrating as J. M. Coetzee's, Lamar Herrin has produced a devastating novel about family, home, and the dangers of plundering the earth. Peopled with characters as real as anyone we know and love, Fractures is a chronicle of our time, one that thrusts to light the dark attraction of technological pioneerism even as it traces the forces that divide and unite us all. I stand in awe of Herrin's enormous talent and depth of heart."

[A] thoroughly human, moving family drama..

Herrin's deeply contemplative examination of this contentious topic is less about the environmental fallout from an invasive destruction of the land and more about the emotional fragility of a family who feels all too deeply the loss of a way of life.

"Fractures is a tightly-knit and irresistible saga rich with the spell of the land and an environmental conscience. With the controversial issue of hydrofracking at its heart, it beautifully explores the sensitive habitat of the family, where intersecting planes of love and loss abound, and the many subterranean forces powerful enough to fracture a psyche or rebuild a heart."

"Lamar Herrin leads us into the convoluted world of hydrofracking-- a Dante's inferno of circles, scams, schemes-- and he uses an amazing wealth of detail to paint a plausible picture of what a hydrofracking operation must be like. It is scary. Hydrofracking may be as diabolical an attack on the earth as has ever been envisioned, but as with all evil, it is inextricably bound up with human nature's highest aspirations. We may never escape this deadly mix. But a brilliant novel like this can offer a transcendent experience in itself with vibrant writing, and complex, compelling characters. This is a breathtaking thrill ride into the futuristic intricacies of hydrofracking and the corresponding fracturing of a family. The prose is wonderfully lyrical."

Fast-paced and immersing, the novel offers a fascinating take on the power of money and politics. Read more...

"In this novel Lamar Herrin confronts head-on one of the most controversial issues of our time, hydrofracking in the Marcellus Shale region of New York and Pennsylvania. Fractures is also an intense family drama, an intimate portrait of several generations of an extended family caught up in an accelerating collision of ideals, values, and memories. It is a story of love, and loss of love, of loyalty and betrayal, and family secrets revealed. Fractures surprises and illuminates this complex struggle in a way no one else has in either fiction or nonfiction. It is a must-read."