Book summary

A coal miner's granddaughter writes about a Pennsylvania town where coal is king, and where the "towers" of the title are the two enormous slag heaps looming over the place. The Polish-American Novak family is the focus of the story--a widowed mother and a large assortment of brothers and sisters, some of whom manage to escape the dead-end life offered by Bakerton, some of whom succumb. Mama Rosa, whose husband died in the mines, is the presiding presence, the tough, nurturing rock who keeps her family mostly steady, but the narrative shifts among several characters, providing a changing perspective on a slice of American life as it was fading away.