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Land Marks

A Novel

Published by She Writes Press
Distributed by Simon & Schuster

LIST PRICE ₹741.00

PRICE MAY VARY BY RETAILER

About The Book

Once you've experienced the devastation of fracking, nothing but stopping it makes sense. After a year of well site visits and protests, four college student activists become determined to protect the people and the places they love.

In the river-crossed northwoods of Michigan, Kate, Brett, Sonya, and Mark, mentored by their former professor Rebecca, keep watch as North American Energy (NorA) connects a corridor of frack well sites deep in the state forests. When NorA expands in unexpected directions and their awful, bigger plan becomes clear, the action begins.

As grassroots activists gather and prepare to stop NorA’s dangerous superfrac, stresses other than the fracturing of the bedrock appear. Sonya is arrested, Rebecca reveals her hidden past, and the one person who knows both women’s stories arrives in camp. Love and solidarity want to win, even if most showdowns with Big Oil don’t end well for those who take a stand.

Suspenseful, poignant, and galvanizing, Land Marks is a tribute to the waterways that connect us, the land that sustains us, and the moments that inspire us to rise up together to say, “No more!”

About The Author

Maryann Lesert writes about people and place in equal measure. Her first novel, Base Ten (Feminist Press, 2009), featured an astrophysicist’s quest for self among Lake Michigan’s forested dunes and the stars. Land Marks grew from two years of boots-on-well-sites research on fracking. Before novels, Maryann wrote plays, including three full-lengths, five one-acts, and collaborations with a memoirist and a local symphony. Maryann lives in west Michigan, where she teaches writing, enjoys time in the natural world (shared with family and friends), and writes by the big lake.

Product Details

  • Publisher: She Writes Press (April 16, 2024)
  • Length: 256 pages
  • ISBN13: 9781647426477

Raves and Reviews

“An impassioned story of anti-fracking activism.”
—Kirkus Reviews

"This book will make you feel alive. Land Marks puts the reader on the gritty front lines of activism as Rebecca Walton, Lesert’s unforgettable protagonist, and a committed band of activists risk it all to battle fracking on Michigan soil. The final pages had me weeping with joy."
—Katy Yocom, author of Three Ways to Disappear, winner of the Siskiyou Prize for Environmental Literature

"Land Marks, Maryann Lesert’s savvy, mindful, and dramatic novel of intergenerational education and place defense, is writing as nonviolent direct action, principled and powerful."
—Stephanie Mills, author of Tough Little Beauties and In Service of the Wild

"Through complicated characters and a compelling fictional narrative, Lesert gives readers a taste of the dedication and commitment of real people and groups working to protect the Great Lakes from the ravages of hydraulic fracturing for natural gas. . . . For tragically, this book is even more timely today than when it was selected as a 2021 Finalist for the Prism Prize for Climate Literature."
—Gail Collins-Ranadive, author of Dinosaur Dreaming, Our Climate Moment

"Land Marks is an important and powerful novel, and deserves its place in a growing literature of ecological resistance. Read it, and then act."
—Derrick Jensen, author of A Language Older Than Words and Endgame

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