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Buffalo Bookshelf: NOVELS ABOUT BUFFALO

Several years ago four novels appeared relatively close to each other that were set in the Niagara Frontier.

Joyce Carol Oates' The Falls deals with a lot of the lore about Niagara Falls as well as Cataract City politics from the early 20th Century through Love Canal. The celebrated author grew up in Niagara Falls and has captured the city's ethos well.

The Falls
by Joyce Carol Oates
Hardcover: Sep 2004,
400 pages.
Paperback: Aug 2005,
512 pages.

Publication information

Loren Belfer's novel, City of Light, looks at Buffalo at the turn of the previous century and the influence and impact the electrification of the city from hydro power had not only on the city, but the world, and the city's prominence in the world. She takes the plight of a single school teacher who becomes involved with Grover Cleveland, a girls' school off Richmond Avenue, where the teacher is employed and where her students are the children of many of the major players in Buffalo, the Pan Am Expo and much more. If you are not completely up to speed on Buffalo history and the city's former greatness when dubbed the Queen City, this is the book to read. It is well written, literarily meritous, yet easy to read and suspenseful to the end.  

City of Light

by Lauren Belfer

Synopses & Reviews Read an Excerpt Reading Group Guide Comment on this title and you could win free books! ISBN13: 9780440235125 ISBN10: 044023512x Condition: Standard All Product Details

BuffaloExPat publisher John Wingspread Howell has written two novels (of a total of three) primarily or significantly set in Buffalo.

His first novel, Naked in Church, is set in a fictitious town named Little Pond (as in big fish in a little pond) placed at the intersection of Routes 16 and 39 just south of the Erie County Line in Cattaraugus County. Howell grew up on a dairy farm in the Town of Yorkshire, high on a hill overlooking the cluster of villages in the area including Arcade, Delevan, Yorkshire, Machias. Little Pond is meant to be a composite of all of these towns and the countryside around them. Much of the story does take place in Western New York, including Buffalo. Howell describes the story as a "Psychological Soap Opera" that explores the dynamics of the town in which he "survived adolescence, just barely" as if all the major social issues were to hit the fan at the same time in the same small town.

In St. Jude's Gospel, Howell's third and most recent novel, there is a subplot in which the Bills win the Superbowl with Doug Flutie at quarterback. The overall story is about the triumph of underdogs, personal and collective. The title comes  from the role of Saint Jude as the patron saint of lost causes and impossible cases. That certainly applies  to the Bills, now more than ever, it seems.

More info about Howell's writing and creative projects, see the writersblock website.