MANCHESTER, NH – Before moving to New Hampshire, author Jane Haigh lived in Alaska for 40 years where she wrote books about the Alaskan Gold Rush. While living in New Hampshire for the past seven years, she “became enchanted with its rural communities and eighteen miles of fabled coastline.” When she set out to write a book, she did so with an aversion to dystopian fiction which populates many bookshelves across the country.
Instead, she found herself inspired by a 1975 novel called Ecotopia. The novel she would write would deal with a modest, green utopia that features a light rail line between the towns of Durham and Dover.
Just writing about the utopia wasn’t enough, however. She needed a plot. She wondered about the hurricane in Providence, RI, in 1938 and tried to imagine where NH would be, 102 years later in the year 2040, if another such hurricane threatened New England again. She called her book Waiting for the Storm.
“It’s about the kinds of choices people make as they live more sustainable lives,” Haigh said.
Haigh held a book signing at the Bookery on March 2. At the event, she unpacked boxes of self-published books, and read passages into a microphone while customers shopped and browsed throughout the store. She appeared energetic and excited, and willing to talk about all the possibilities she imagined as a self-described green architect.
In 1986, she designed and built a super-insulted passive solar house with solar collectors in Fairbanks, Alaska.
“Dover and Durham caught my interest because they are only six miles apart and connected by the Amtrak line which is now used by the Portland to Boston Downeaster,” Haigh wrote an addendum to the book called Reflections. “What would happen if it were a light rail line that really connected the two towns with every ten-minute service? And if there were autonomous electric vehicles and people did not have to get in their cars at all?”
The book, which she estimates at 70,000 words, is 285 pages long. The novel is available for purchase through Haigh’s website or through Amazon. The book is priced at $0.99 for an ebook or $16 for a paperback.
“I was really lucky that so many of my friends and family showed up for my book signing,” Haigh said. “I’m just really happy about that.”
