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Land Marks

A Novel

Published by She Writes Press
Distributed by Simon & Schuster

About The Book

Land Marks is a timely story of friendship, hope, and resistance as the call to “Drill, baby, drill!” returns and Big Oil & Gas makes big plans for all of our places.

Once you've experienced the devastation of fracking, nothing but stopping it makes sense.

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 and 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, aided by Lake Michigan’s forested dunes. 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, and writes by the big lake.

Product Details

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

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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. If ever there were a necessary book for our times, Land Marks is it. You will close this book feeling washed with elation.”—Katy Yocom, author of Three Ways to Disappear, winner of the Siskiyou Prize for Environmental Literature

"This compelling novel gets at the emotions that undergird activism—the love, the fear, the feeling that something somehow must be done. I recognized much that was familiar, and learned much that was new.”—Bill McKibben, author Radio Free Vermont

“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

“This polemical outing is both an elegy for ecosystems already lost and a call to action.”—Publishers Weekly

“Land Marks is a novel that captures the unpleasant truths of fracking through a human lens, not only breaking hearts but warming them, too.”—Foreword Reviews

“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

“May this story inspire us to pause when we turn on our gas furnace, stove, water heater, and to ponder alternatives. 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

“Maryann Lesert deftly weaves a story of compelling characters and lyrical descriptions of land and water with an urgent plea for the protection of the Earth while there is still time. This outstanding novel is about our common fight for the natural places and systems we hold dear, but it is also about our society's soul.”—Liz Kirkwood, Executive Director of FLOW (For Love of Water)

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