When fracking took off in the early aughts, activists living in small towns and on reservations protested the fossil-fuel infrastructure snaking through their lands. Madeline ffitch's first novel, Stay and Fight, is about those kinds of people living in one of those kinds of towns. The character Helen, a Seattle-born thirtysomething hippie-anarchist with a BA in social work, has literally entered the Alighierian "dark wood" period of her life. She purchases 20 acres of coal company land. Eventually, Helen convinces a lesbian couple with a baby boy on the way to build a house with her on the land, forming a matriarchal "wolf pack" that lives off the grid. The only man in their lives is Rudy, a chaotic-good, ponytailed arborist. Together they make a family bound less by blood than by a sense of shared purpose and ideals. ffitch troubles the false dichotomy between action that results in "lasting change" and action that results in a broadcast news story. Every action, no matter how small or big or illegal, can make lasting change. by Rich Smith