Bakerton is a community of company houses and church festivals, of union squabbles and firemen's parades. Its neighborhoods include Little Italy... read full description
reviews
Dec 17, 2009
Kelly
rated it: 
I really enjoyed Jennifer Haighs first book, "Mrs. Kimble" and was looking forward to her second novel. This book did not disappoint. Instead of following three wives, as her previous novel, this book traces the lives of a family (specially the relationship between siblings) dealing with tragedy, changing economics and different personalities. It wasn't quite five stars but definitely a book I'd recommend.
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Jul 15, 2008
Sandie
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For this reader Baker Towers held a very personal message. It reversed the passage of time and took me on a vicarious trip back to the small town of my youth. In describing Bakerton, Jennifer Haigh accurately captured the essence of small town America in the 1940's , 50's and 60's where parents from the "old country" worked hard in an attempt to ensure that their offspring would have a chance at the American Dream. Haigh's Bakerton could easily have been the small, predominently Polish
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Jan 05, 2009
Dee
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Baker Towers,is a story of a Polish-Italian family, the Novaks, with five children who come of age in a Pennsylvania coal-mining town during and after WWII. Head of the household Stanley Novak drops dead one afternoon after returning from the mines, leaving his Italian wife, Rose, to struggle on her own to feed her children and maintain the household. The book follows the life of each of the family members who take some interestng twists and turns as they grow up.
In describing Baker More...
In describing Baker More...
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Mar 07, 2009
Laura
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This book is character-driven, not plot-driven. The author does a wonderful job of sucking me into the book and wondering what happens next with each person, and thankfully doesn't leave a lot of random chapters in between big events, which seems to happen a lot in books I read (which prompts me to skip ahead and then ruin the book). The only problem is that it might not be that memorable. It was very good, but not full of sparkles and something I will necessarily remember reading later.
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Mar 05, 2009
Christina
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Despite not being all that impressed with Haigh’s third novel, The Condition, I wanted to give her second, Baker Towers, a chance. After all, the plotline intrigued me and I did have good things to say about her writing style. Now, I wish I could take them all back.
A friend asked me what I thought of Baker Towers towards the beginning of the school day this morning -- I was only thirty-eight pages in -- but I immediately replied that it was very staccato. For those you who don’t “spe More...
A friend asked me what I thought of Baker Towers towards the beginning of the school day this morning -- I was only thirty-eight pages in -- but I immediately replied that it was very staccato. For those you who don’t “spe More...
Sep 26, 2011
Elizabeth
rated it:
Preface: I did NOT like Mrs. Kimble and am surprised that it was award-winning.
I DO like Baker Towers and am particularly impressed that Ms. Haigh (pronounced like The Hague in the Netherlands, the book advises) wrote about a coal mining community in Pennsylvania. The title refers to the towers build of leftover trash coal, which in the Southern coal mining country I grew up in, we called "clinkers." As she described in the book, these "towers" of leftovers could More...
I DO like Baker Towers and am particularly impressed that Ms. Haigh (pronounced like The Hague in the Netherlands, the book advises) wrote about a coal mining community in Pennsylvania. The title refers to the towers build of leftover trash coal, which in the Southern coal mining country I grew up in, we called "clinkers." As she described in the book, these "towers" of leftovers could More...
Jul 03, 2011
Jean
rated it: 
So interesting how I came to read THIS novel by Jennifer Haigh. Katie recommended "Faith," which was out in the library. However, as I searched for it, I found "Baker Towers" and "The Condition." "The Condition" sounded better to me, but then I thought, "Oh maybe Mom would like 'Baker Towers'." So I took out both. Coincidently, when I next checked my emails, I somehow stumbled upon Katie's positive review of "Baker Towers." I More...
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Jan 04, 2010
Sarah
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I enjoyed this book a lot.
Anyone who knows me understands my intense need for character development.
This book has it. That characters are unique, realistic, and provide insight into humanity.
We follow the journey of a family who has just lost their patriarch in a mid 20th century small coal mining town. We see how much coal mining effects the culture a town of immigrants.
If you are looking for a plot, there is little to be found here.
Instead is re More...
Anyone who knows me understands my intense need for character development.
This book has it. That characters are unique, realistic, and provide insight into humanity.
We follow the journey of a family who has just lost their patriarch in a mid 20th century small coal mining town. We see how much coal mining effects the culture a town of immigrants.
If you are looking for a plot, there is little to be found here.
Instead is re More...
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Jul 13, 2010
Susan
rated it:
This book sounds like it might be about the residents of a high-end condominium but it is much more down to earth. In fact, the chief occupation is under the earth: coal mining in Pennsylvania.
I listened to this as an audio-book and found the characters and their stories very involving and emotionally satisfying. The author switches viewpoints frequently which take some getting used to, but it's like she's putting together a fascinating and complex jig saw puzzle, and at the end the last More...
I listened to this as an audio-book and found the characters and their stories very involving and emotionally satisfying. The author switches viewpoints frequently which take some getting used to, but it's like she's putting together a fascinating and complex jig saw puzzle, and at the end the last More...
Jul 24, 2008
Diana
rated it:
I found this book at the Pittsburgh airport two years ago while traveling for work. I loved her previous book, Mrs. Kimble. Little did I know until Baker Heights that the author grew up less than 20 miles from where I did. She knows that area -- impoverished and spirit-broken. Baker Heights told the story of the real Barnsboro-area coal mines. My grandfather lost his arm in a mining accident not far from there.
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Feb 05, 2009
Haigh, author of the award-winning Mrs. Kimble (*** May/June 2003) and the granddaughter of coal miners, grew up in a Pennsylvania mining town. She introduces an unsentimental, harsh beauty into her fictional rendering of one family's lives in a town that "wore away like a bar of soap" as mining left an economically bereft, scarred landscape. The heart of the novel centers on Haigh's characters as they make certain life choices within the era's social mores. Shifting narrative perspect
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Oct 05, 2009
Clif
rated it:
If I were to title this book, I'd call it "Drowning"
Life in a small industrial town isn't heaven as novelists have told us before. Haigh tells an interesting story involving the members of a Italian/Polish family from the WWII years into the 1960's. Her characters, particularly those who are female, are well developed and the events are quite believable. Literally or figuratively no one escapes alive.
A sense of rootedness covers everyone like a blanket of coal d More...
Life in a small industrial town isn't heaven as novelists have told us before. Haigh tells an interesting story involving the members of a Italian/Polish family from the WWII years into the 1960's. Her characters, particularly those who are female, are well developed and the events are quite believable. Literally or figuratively no one escapes alive.
A sense of rootedness covers everyone like a blanket of coal d More...
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Feb 06, 2012
CoffeeBook
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For my full review, click here: http://www.coffeeandabookchick.com/2012/...
...Bakerton, Pennsylvania is made up of residents who are Swedish, Polish, and Italian immigrants, with the coal mine employing a good majority. In the Novak family, the home is traditional to the time and place. Rose and Stanley, first-generations to America, live in Polish Hill in company-owned housing. Rose, an Italian wife and mother, remains at home to take care of their five children, and her Polish husba More...
...Bakerton, Pennsylvania is made up of residents who are Swedish, Polish, and Italian immigrants, with the coal mine employing a good majority. In the Novak family, the home is traditional to the time and place. Rose and Stanley, first-generations to America, live in Polish Hill in company-owned housing. Rose, an Italian wife and mother, remains at home to take care of their five children, and her Polish husba More...
Nov 28, 2011
Jaclyn
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Bakerton, Pennsylvania is a mining town. It's a town of company houses and union jobs, of church and family. Bakerton is a town that depends on its coal mines and, in the years during and after World War II, those mines are doing raging business. Baker Towers is the story of those years, told from the perspective of the Novak family: widowed Rose Novak and her five children, Georgie, Dorothy, Joyce, Sandy and Lucy. Georgie and Dorothy escape their small-town childhoods, Georgie for the Navy
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Feb 28, 2011
Lea Ann
rated it: 
Baker Towers begins with the death of Stanley Novak and then follows the five Novak Children, George, Dorothy, Joyce, Sandy, and Lucy through almost three decades of events. The story takes place in Bakerton, a town built on the coal mining industry and founded by the Baker brothers - owners of twelve separate mines that employ almost the entire town.
I enjoyed reading about a small town and the unique life led by those who live in company houses, shop at the company store, and basic More...
I enjoyed reading about a small town and the unique life led by those who live in company houses, shop at the company store, and basic More...
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Oct 21, 2009
Stephanie
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I really, really liked this book…I just wanted to keep reading and reading. It is not high drama or anything but rather just follows this one family (mom and five siblings), the Novaks, person by person at different points in their lives, through the WWII and post-WWII time periods up through the 60s and into the next generation of the family. They live in a small mining town, Bakerton, that offers limited opportunities and it is interesting to see what each of the five siblings chooses to do
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Dec 30, 2010
Dyana
rated it:
I really enjoyed this book, and altho this story was character driven with no real plot it's a realistic story about the basics of life and family. Baker towers refer to the 80 foot coal tipples that were created from collected waste in the small Pennsylvania coal-mining town of Bakerton. Beyond the descriptions of life in Bakerton during and after WWII, it's about the five Novak children - Georgie, Dorothy, Joyce, Sandy, and Lucy. It shows how they are each were affected by the changing econ
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Jul 10, 2011
Susan
rated it:
An engaging saga of a Polish-Italian family in a Pennsylvania coal mining town. The story begins when theiir father dies young from the coal exposure; the oldest son goes off to fight in WWII; the oldest daughter goes to work in Washington DC; the middle daughter serves her country in the military, then returns home to take care of family; the youngest daughter grows up and off to college; the youngest son grows up and leaves town seeking adventure. Eventually the children return, for short visi
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Feb 10, 2012
Beth
rated it:
This book captured my eye when it was first published. I love covers that have a nostalgic vibe to them. The colors on the cover are muted and somewhat drab which gives a clue to the atmosphere of the story. I don't mean that in bad way.
The story of the Novak family is not bright and cheery by any means. It is the story of a family who doesn't have an easy life. The Novaks live in a home owned by the company mine where Stanley Novak is a coal miner. The book begins with the death of More...
The story of the Novak family is not bright and cheery by any means. It is the story of a family who doesn't have an easy life. The Novaks live in a home owned by the company mine where Stanley Novak is a coal miner. The book begins with the death of More...
Apr 24, 2011
Carly
rated it:
This was a highly enjoyable character driven novel with a strong sense of place. Bakerton was a fully recognizable small industrial town made up of various nationalities (Polish, Italian) with important local traditions. I liked that historical events (i.e. WWII, JFK’s election) were incorporated into the narrative but didn’t overwhelm it. This was not a historical fiction novel where the characters rubbed elbows with famous personalities, which I appreciated since I tend to like the stories of
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Oct 13, 2011
Katharine
rated it:
A view of life in the Pennsylvania coal region, mid-twentieth century, as seen through the eyes of a Polish/Italian family. Not a cheerful tale, but then, it wasn't a cheerful life. The book is well written, however, and the characters become very real as they grow-up, look for jobs, get married, move away (some of them) from Bakersfield, and eventually (some of them) return. Meanwhile, the town itself is changing, as American towns did during those years, and continue to now. The story raises t
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Aug 05, 2010
Kris
rated it:
Bakerton is a city built on coal. Everyone works in the mines and lives in the same-built, identical company houses. As long as the mines operate, the families survive; but don't quite thrive. The Novak family, made up of parents and five children, are part of this community. Each character is beautifully, skillfully developed. I laughed and cried as these people came of age during wartime, a time when lives were changing very quickly. I love Joyce, who courageously and unselfishly (though somet
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Oct 22, 2011
Heather
rated it:
Admittedly I picked this because it was one of the first books I could find available from my public library for Kindle. (And by *my* public library I mean the public library where my parents live.) I've enjoyed the other books by Jennifer Haigh I've read so I'm expecting about the same.
October 22: This is probably amongst the quickest reads I've had in quite some time. Mostly because I was completely enthralled and couldn't put it down. The characters were three dimensional and - once More...
October 22: This is probably amongst the quickest reads I've had in quite some time. Mostly because I was completely enthralled and couldn't put it down. The characters were three dimensional and - once More...
Feb 09, 2012
Diane
rated it:
After reading Faith by Jennifer Haigh and reading some reviews that including this book as her first novel, I wanted to get it from the library. It was an easy, fast read (could have been the large print edition Mom always liked). Anyway, I was not disappointed and somewhat felt real to me - Bakerton reminded me of my own small home town, it was farming tho, not coal mines. The author captures every member of the Novaks during the 1940's to the Vietnam era, as they grow up, leave, love, colle
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Jul 23, 2010
Tess
rated it:
I find Jennifer Haigh's books completely absorbing; I love the way she can write from the point-of-view of so many different types of characters, male and female and offer such truthful and engrossing perspectives. This one took me a little by surprise towards the end; it wrapped up abruptly after a nice, steady pace and I felt like a few characters got short-changed. There was also an undercurrent of sadness throughout--many characters had the deck stacked against them and it didn't exactly cha
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Feb 01, 2012
Audra (Unabridged Chick)
rated it:
This is a good book that becomes great; or maybe it was always great, and it just snuck up on me. I lingered over this novel, picking it up and now, since the chapters vary in length and POV. It was easy to dip in and out of the Novaks' lives, but Haigh's writing style and gentle characterizations kept me coming back.
Set in Bakerton, a coal-mining town in Western Pennsylvania, Haigh paints a picture of the Novak family, Polish-Italian immigrants who struggle to chart their own ex More...
Set in Bakerton, a coal-mining town in Western Pennsylvania, Haigh paints a picture of the Novak family, Polish-Italian immigrants who struggle to chart their own ex More...
Mar 06, 2011
Christine
rated it:
The best way I can describe this book is that it is a snapshot of generation of a Pennsylvania coal mining family. The novel is written from the perspectives of several family members during very specific times of their lives. So, while you may discover much about one character when she is in her early 20s you don't learn very much else about her at other times of her life even though she is still very much part of the novel. This results in lots of unanswered questions about all of the characte
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Aug 20, 2010
Linda
rated it:
I was rather disappointed in this book.
The story of a mining town told through the lives of the members of one family was initially very interesting. What I found disconcerting is the jumping around in time, sometimes going forward into the future, and then coming back to tell the story, at other times going backwards to explain an event. The characters of the family were clearly delineated, the saintly widowed mother who dotes on her youngest children. Dorothy, the fragile older si More...
The story of a mining town told through the lives of the members of one family was initially very interesting. What I found disconcerting is the jumping around in time, sometimes going forward into the future, and then coming back to tell the story, at other times going backwards to explain an event. The characters of the family were clearly delineated, the saintly widowed mother who dotes on her youngest children. Dorothy, the fragile older si More...
May 01, 2011
Elizabeth (Alaska)
rated it:
The story takes place in Bakerton, named after the Baker brothers who establish a coal mine. The Towers of the title are piles of waste coal and are a symbol of the vitality of the town. I live in a small town where two tall buildings (and there are only two!), when they were built, symbolized growth and prosperity. I could relate to how the townspeople of Bakerton felt about the towers.
The story begins in the latter years of World War II and centers on one coal-mining family, a marr More...
The story begins in the latter years of World War II and centers on one coal-mining family, a marr More...
Aug 05, 2008
Kendra
rated it:
I hate to go all the way to a 3 Star rating with this, but it really wasn't desreving of a full 4 start rating. I have read Mrs. Kimble, which I also enjoyed, but on the say type of pace.
It is an extremely easy read, I probably could have read it faster than I did, but instead took my time, and still it only took a week. It is a story that does keep you captivated, I never lost interest. Jennifer Haigh does a good job of creating a setting and characters, and building a story around More...
It is an extremely easy read, I probably could have read it faster than I did, but instead took my time, and still it only took a week. It is a story that does keep you captivated, I never lost interest. Jennifer Haigh does a good job of creating a setting and characters, and building a story around More...
