Books That Bring Pittsburgh’s Neighborhoods Alive
- Hilary Daninhirsch
- 1 hour ago
- 5 min read
When we read, we often connect with the storyline, as sometimes the situations in a book mirror our own lives or propel us to engage emotionally with the themes. It is especially poignant to read stories in which Pittsburgh is the setting. That familiarity with place can make the book even more enjoyable and provides yet another way in which we connect to a story.
Fortunately, we have no shortage of Pittsburgh-born authors, many of whom have set their books in the ’Burgh. Some well-known books that feature Pittsburgh include The Mysteries of Pittsburgh by Michael Chabon; The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky; Carnegie’s Maid by Marie Benedict; and the memoir An American Childhood by Annie Dillard. Stewart O’Nan is another author who has set more than one novel in Pittsburgh, including Emily Alone and Henry, Himself.
Paul Hertneky grew up in Ambridge in the 1950s, at a time when the American Bridge Company was thriving and life was a bit simpler. Though he now lives in New Hampshire, his
formative years in a working-class riverfront town stayed with him, resulting in the 2016 essay collection Rust Belt Boy.
Hertneky’s idea for the book was prompted by his realization that Ambridge was historically significant—something he hadn’t understood in his youth. “The Harmony Society was a very highly successful religious separatist group that came from Germany and eventually settled in today’s Ambridge. One of the major themes of the book is that Pittsburgh was significant because it lost so many jobs so fast in the 1970s that it became a focal point for a diaspora of Baby Boomers. About six million Baby Boomers left the Rust Belt, with Pittsburgh as its center,” he said. This migration away from the Rust Belt occurred over a 20-year period between the 1970s and 1990s.
Hertneky himself worked in a steel mill and said that while his stories are highly personal, they parallel the story of a town (Ambridge) and a city (Pittsburgh), mirroring his own journey—one that reflects many other similar towns across America. “It has aspects about why Pittsburgh is a sports city, historical development, a historical thread that goes through how Ambridge was founded and how Pittsburgh played a role in that,” he said.
Hertneky shared that one of his readers said the book felt like a love letter to his own boyhood, but also a “Dear John” letter. Despite leaving Pittsburgh nearly 50 years ago for New England, he still considers himself a Pittsburgher. “I want people to see how culturally rich a working-class city can be. It’s a city full of neighborhoods and a city full of ethnicities; it’s an open city with kind of an open mind,” he observed. “Immigrants built Pittsburgh, and in much the same way, they built this country. In a way, it’s a microcosm.”
Anna Bruno is a Pittsburgh-born author whose new book, Fine Young People, is a murder mystery that takes place at a Catholic prep school and centers around the death of the school’s star hockey player. Though Bruno was raised in Upper St. Clair and attended Shady Side Academy, she set the book in Sewickley, a town she visited frequently while growing up.
As for the plot, Bruno said, “The school is very focused on the hockey team, the endowment, Ivy League admission, the secular idols of society. The school is going through that transition to become an elite prep school, so the book is about that too; it explores where things went wrong for this place that seemed idyllic.”
Bruno said the campus was inspired by Shady Side Academy, but since that school is based in Fox Chapel, she needed a setting in a walkable community with historic architecture and significant wealth. “The Sewickley setting just suited the mood for the mystery.” Other Pittsburgh locations make appearances in the book, such as the Strip District, and characters take the incline up to Mt. Washington. The Pittsburgh Penguins also figure prominently.
The Sewickley and Pittsburgh settings are central to Fine Young People. “When you’re an author and you write about the town you grew up in, you have such intimacy with the place and so much intergenerational knowledge about Pittsburgh. I think Pittsburgh is a really good setting for a novel—especially a coming-of-age novel—because it’s a very modest city and very much oriented to family life. Everyone says it’s a great place to grow up, so it allowed me to focus on that type of narrative,” she said.
Cara Reinard, currently a Mars resident, grew up in New Castle and is the author of a thriller/family drama called Sweet Water. As the title may reveal to residents of this borough, this dual-timeline novel—featuring characters from different socioeconomic classes—is also set in Sewickley. “Sweet Water paints an ‘other side of the tracks’ atmosphere for the transplants trying to blend into this tight-knit group—the dichotomy of class split by the Ohio River that separates them,” said Reinard.
Reinard said being from the ’Burgh has inspired her writing, particularly since the book is partially set in a real historic home in Sewickley: steel mogul B.F. Jones’s Party House, built in 1927. “The house also acts as a character in the book. It really bakes in the atmosphere. When you try to write a book where the setting is a character, it’s really important to be familiar with all the areas you are describing. Sweet Water is very atmospheric and captures different facets of Pittsburgh, alternating between the ’90s and present day,” she said.
Kathleen George is a Johnstown native but has lived and worked in Pittsburgh for 60 years. In addition to other books set in Western Pennsylvania, including The Johnstown Girls, George has created the Richard Christie crime series—police procedural novels in which Pittsburgh plays a prominent role.
George, who teaches at the University of Pittsburgh, enjoys the writing process as much as the research process, as it allows her to learn more about many Pittsburgh locales. Her current neighborhood—North Side—and former neighborhoods—Oakland, Squirrel Hill, and Shadyside—have all appeared in her books. George also contributed to and edited a collection of stories called Pittsburgh Noir, alongside other Pittsburgh-based authors.
In her writing, she likes to portray Pittsburgh as she sees it: “I think it’s mainly a very honest town, and so is Johnstown. I came from this area of the world where people are very kind,” she said. “Pittsburgh is full of surprises—what seem like country roads in the middle of the city, houses with two small rooms on each of its two floors. I love setting scenes in these places.”
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