Land Marks

A group of anti-fracking activists face off with oil and gas executives in the energizing latest from Lesert (Base Ten). Rebecca Walton, an English professor at an unnamed Michigan university, forms a bond with four students from her eco-literature class. Over two summers, they photograph fracking sites, attend community meetings, and build friendships with local landowners turned activists. When she learns that Sonya, a former student, was arrested for trespassing at a site, Rebecca joins with Sonya’s friends in simultaneous direct-action demonstrations across Michigan. The operation involves roadblocks on service roads, dancing grandmothers protecting other activists who have chained themselves to a fracking well, and boaters who stage an oil spill in the Straits of Mackinac. Rebecca, wary of crossing a line into criminal behavior and losing her job, weighs the risk of arrest against her sense of moral urgency (“The pain of observing—of knowing and photographing and writing but stopping short of doing”). Some of the characterizations are a bit thin, but as the story unfolds, Lesert illustrates the protestors’ sacrifices and the joy that springs from their joining together, clarifying for readers the environmental and human costs of fracking. This polemical outing is both an elegy for ecosystems already lost and a call to action. (Apr.)