Maryann Lesert writes about people and the places they love, with the landscape as central as her strong women characters. 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 (shared with family and friends), and writes by the big lake.

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!”