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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. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From School Library Journal
Adult/High School–The eponymous towers of the title are the still-smoldering slag heaps from the coal mines of Bakerton, PA. That the town was named after the mines rather than the other way around sets them firmly at the center of the lives of the inhabitants. The novel focuses on five siblings following the death of their father in 1944, and progresses through the late '60s. Of Italian and Polish extraction, they all have Bakerton firmly rooted in their psyches even as they attempt to move away. Georgie leaves the army and marries, uncomfortably, into Philadelphia society, Dorothy attempts to fit into wartime D.C., and Joyce goes into the military too late for wartime responsibility. Meanwhile, spoiled and handsome Sandy moves away to find his fortune and comes back to hide from some shady associates, and baby Lucy finishes college yet follows her heart back to Bakerton. Each time frame is clearly limned, from the Washington of white gloves and fake silk stockings to the falling away of old loyalties and habits in the '60s. Eventually, the mines close with a frightening cave-in, but not before readers have become achingly aware of the lives of the citizens of the town. Teens will identify with the need to escape from one's origins, but they may also realize how unlikely real escape is. There is as much to admire in the lives of the townspeople as there is to escape. The place and times of the towers are vividly drawn, and young adults may see the universality in their specifics.–Susan H. Woodcock, Fairfax County Public Library, VA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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