Just Finished…

Hello!

I just finished a really good non-fiction book…

American Fire
by Monica Hesse

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On November 12, 2012, in a rural county called Accomack on the Eastern Shore of Virginia, an abandoned house blazed. While no one was hurt, it was a long night for the firefighters — not because that particular fire proved a challenge, but because they were called to put out two more that night. Over the next five months, they’d be called out again and again, sometimes several times a night, often several nights in a row. “The county went about its business,” Hesse writes. “The county burned down.”

The culprit, and the path that led to these crimes, is a story of twenty-first century America. Washington Post reporter Monica Hesse first drove down to the reeling county to cover a hearing for Charlie Smith, a struggling mechanic who upon his capture had promptly pleaded guilty to sixty-seven counts of arson. But as Charlie’s confession unspooled, it got deeper and weirder. He wasn’t lighting fires alone; his crimes were galvanized by a surprising love story. Over a year of investigating, Hesse uncovered the motives of Charlie and his accomplice, girlfriend Tonya Bundick, a woman of steel-like strength and an inscrutable past. Theirs was a love built on impossibly tight budgets and simple pleasures. They were each other’s inspiration and escape…until they weren’t.

As a reader who enjoys fiction over non-fiction, I must admit this NF book ranks as one of my favorite books I have read this year.  It reads like a fiction book, it’s suspenseful, a page turner, focuses on the characters, I mean “real” people, and the effect of the fires that rage every night in their county for six months. The biggest question isn’t Who is doing the fires, but ends up being Why.

I would give this book 5 out of 5 stars.

 

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