So I think this argument over fracking is in a basic way a class argument.The following version of this book was used to create this study guide: Haigh, Jennifer. Why wouldn't you? It just seems like manna from heaven. 'To people who live in a region like this, who haven't had any good news in a very long time, it's inconceivable that you would refuse to sell your mineral rights. 'The controversy about fracking has been so interesting for me to follow, because where I live in Boston, my friends are environmentally conscious, and there's a pretty unanimous consensus that fracking is a pretty terrible idea, and nobody should ever do it,' she says. Like so many others, Haigh moved away long ago - but growing up here, she understands why people let strangers come in and tear up their land looking for natural gas. Fracking had not yet moved into this area when Haigh started writing the book, so she visited other towns to see how the process of drilling changes the land and daily life. Nothing has replaced the mines in this town. 'But all that has been dismantled long ago.' 'Back in the day, back when I was in high school and the mine was still running, from this vantage point you could see the tipple of the mine,' Haigh says. You would never know there once was a working mine here. When we stop the car and get out, we're standing at the top of big round bowl of land littered with trash. I thought I knew what I thought about fracking, and as I learned more about it, I realized it was not as simple as it seemed to be - and so I continually found myself inventing characters who were inhabiting different parts of this argument. 'When I started to write this book I thought I knew what I thought about fracking, and as I learned more about it, I realized it was not as simple as it seemed to be - and so I continually found myself inventing characters who were inhabiting different parts of this argument,' Haigh says. There's an environmentalist who stirs up the pot, and a charismatic energy company executive.

We see the effects of their decision from the perspective of many characters: a prison guard who sells his rights to finance a dream, an organic farmer who refuses to sign. The choice that landowners face in the novel is whether to lease their mineral rights for natural gas drilling, also known as fracking. 'I think it's a book about the soul of a place and how the soul of a place is impacted by the choices we make, economic choices, that's really the heart of the book.'

But Haigh says she doesn't think of it as a book about fracking. She's taken what she knows and turned it into a new novel, Heat and Light. Your purchase helps support NPR programming.

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