Lamar Herrin’s latest novel, “Fractures,” uses hydrofracking as the dramatic backdrop to a story of a family confronting memories and change.

Herrin, professor emeritus of English and creative writing, has lived in the Ithaca area since 1977 and retired from Cornell in 2006. He’s written six books including a memoir, “Romancing Spain,” but “Fractures,” to be published Nov. 12 by St. Martin’s Press, is his first novel set entirely in this region.

“The town is unmistakably Ithaca, but there is no college, no university,” he says. “‘House of the Deaf’ has a chapter set at Cornell. There’s a student who goes to school in an unnamed place between two gorges. Mostly, I’ve been placing my writing in the American South and Midwest, or Spain; places I lived when I was younger. You write about places you want to hold onto and re-create. The South has been important to me, and writers like [William] Faulkner, Thomas Wolfe, Eudora Welty.”

His main characters in “Fractures” include Frank Joyner, a retired architect whose farmhouse sits atop the Marcellus Shale on land homesteaded by his grandfather; and Kenny Brewster, an ex-oil rig worker from Texas who comes north as a landman for the energy company and becomes involved with Joyner’s daughter. For their own reasons, Joyner’s children, other family members and his lawyer try to convince him to seize the opportunity and potential financial windfall an energy exploration company is offering.

Herrin began work on the novel in early 2011 and researched the energy issues in the book by talking with landowners in the area and in northern Pennsylvania, where natural gas exploration has been in full swing.

“Before I begin on a novel I like to get enlightened on what is going on,” he says. “I drove down to Montrose, Pa., a county seat, and I began to talk to people. … The gas drilling was disrupting things. I went to the county courthouse; there was a line of desks out in the hall. They told me that people have been coming in right and left to check the titles on their land. I imagined them all with family members disputing who owned what. This was a stage for a big family novel.”

The issue is close to home in many ways for the author, who mentions that one of his neighbors in Danby has signed a natural gas lease.

“The hydrofracking issue has happened to everyone in this area,” he says. “I know where I stand on it. Do I approve of it or not? I tried to keep that out of the book. It seemed like a tremendously divisive issue, and a fascinating one. It’s an issue that is hard to get around morally. Is there a basic hypocrisy in saying ‘not in our backyard’?”

Herrin will give a reading from the novel Nov. 9 at 4 p.m. at Buffalo Street Books in Ithaca.