Summary

Epilogue – White Hats. At the beginning of 2017, Stacey celebrates victories against fracking in America and elsewhere – narration comments that “It was how she made sense of the world; to place herself at the center of things and believe that her story was helping to change things far away, since closer to home their future was bleak” (289). This leads to comments from author Griswold on how settlement talks with Range Resources had collapsed; how the Smiths are starting to feel the toll of all their work; and how Beth continues to get increasingly ill.

Griswold, meanwhile, is taken on a tour by a pair of local employees of Range Resources who show her the improvements the company has made on their processes, despite its economic situation deteriorating. She describes how both employees used the idea of the “white hat” (296) denoting good guy / heroic behavior...