The Building (Books of Furnass)

The Building, the first book of the Furnass Towers Trilogy, is the story of the well-intentioned but ill-conceived attempt to construct a high-rise building in the middle of a stricken mill town. It is the story of a head-strong superintendent who pours concrete when he’s told not to . . . of a rebar foreman whose insecurities make him dangerous to everyone around him . . . the story of an architect who hides the project’s true cost so he can build a monument to himself . . . a young inspector totally out of his depth . . . a local developer content to wait and pick up the pieces when the dust settles . . . and it is the story of a young woman across the alley who dances each morning in her window as she takes her shower, who distracts one worker to the point of a fatal accident and provides sanctuary for another.

Richard Snodgrass is the author of the critically acclaimed novel, There’s Something in the Back Yard, published by Viking Press in 1989. His published work also includes two books of prose and photographs: An Uncommon Field: The Flight 93 Temporary Memorial, Carnegie Mellon University Press; and, Kitchen Things, An Album of Vintage Kitchen Utensils, Skyhorse Publishing. His short stories and essays have appeared in the New England Review and Bread Loaf Quarterly, South Dakota Review, California Review, Table Magazine, among others. Grants and fellowships include: Artist in Residence, LightWorks, University of Syracuse; Artist in Residence, Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, Taos, New Mexico; and a Fellowship from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. He lives in Pittsburgh with his wife Marty and two indomitable female tuxedo cats, rescued as feral kittens, named Frankie and Becca. Publication of the eight-volume Furnass cycle, about a fictitious Western Pennsylvania mill town, culminates work spanning more than thirty-five years.