American Fire: Love, Arson, and Life in a Vanishing Land
Author(s): Monica Hesse
The arsons started on a cold November midnight and didn't stop for months. Night after night, the people of Accomack County waited to see which building would burn down next, regarding each other at first with compassion, and later suspicion. Vigilante groups sprang up, patrolling the rural Virginia coast with cameras and camouflage. Volunteer firefighters slept at their stations. The arsonist seemed to target abandoned buildings, but local police were stretched too thin to surveil them all. Accomack was desolate-there were hundreds of abandoned buildings. And by the dozen they were burning. 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. Though it's hard to believe today, one hundred years ago Accomack was the richest rural county in the nation. Slowly it's been drained of its industry-agriculture-as well as its wealth and population. In an already remote region, limited employment options offer little in the way of opportunity. A mesmerizing and crucial panorama with nationwide implications, American Fire asks what happens when a community gets left behind. Hesse brings to life the Eastern Shore and its inhabitants, battling a punishing economy and increasingly terrified by a string of fires they could not explain. The result evokes the soul of rural America-a land half gutted before the fires even began.
General Information
- :
- : WW Norton & Co
- : Liveright Publishing Corporation
- : 0.54
- : 22 August 2017
- : United States
- : 01 August 2017
- : books
Other Specifications
- : Monica Hesse
- : Hardback
- : 288
- : 8 pages of illustrations
More About The Product
"The propulsive pleasure of American Fire rests in author Monica Hesse's decision not to force a thing. The book has the brisk diligence of big-city journalism (Hesse writes for the Washington Post) and the languid chattiness of the small town where she lived while researching it. . . . Hesse gathers the pieces but leaves connections to the reader. When they snap together, the feeling is a bit like gazing upon a blaze you've just lit." -- Karl Vick - Time "Hesse enters the compelling narrative with restraint in probing, essayistic analyses. She tells the story of the fires and of the Eastern Shore and the people she got to know there with an earned familiarity that, at the same time, speaks of the unknowability of a vast, rapidly changing nation." -- Annie Bostrom - Booklist, starred review "Mesmerizing. . . . Hesse recounts the fires and their investigation and the subsequent trials with cinematic immediacy." -- Jonathan Miles - Garden & Gun "A captivating narrative about arson, persistent law enforcers, an unlikely romantic relationship, and a courtroom drama. . . . Throughout, the author offers a nuanced portrait of a way of life unknown to most who have never resided on or visited the Eastern Shore. A true-crime saga that works in every respect." -- Kirkus Reviews, starred review "Washington Post reporter Hesse leads readers on an extended tour of a bizarre five-month crime spree in rural Accomack County, Va.: a series of over 80 arsons, of predominantly abandoned buildings, committed by a local couple. . . . A page-turning story of love gone off the rails." -- Publishers Weekly "A rare combination of reportorial know-how and literary flair, American Fire is a page-turner. Crimes and chaos, detectives and firefighters, headlines and red herrings, and it all boils down to a Gothic love story gone wrong. You need time to investigate a story like this, following the police leads all the way to the hidden-in-plain-sight, off-kilter individuals generating the mayhem; you need space to tell a story like this, fact-based and evocative. People who think they don't like nonfiction will devour this book. People who love nonfiction will love it, too." -- Melissa Fay Greene, author of Praying for Sheetrock and The Underdogs "America in decline, a love gone berserk, and fire...lots and lots of it. If you pick up this book and open it to the first page, I double-dog dare you to put it down." -- Dennis Covington, author of Salvation on Sand Mountain "American Fire is a wonderful book of page-turning, true-crime reportage, exquisitely reported with both humanity and humor. Books like this remind us, in an uncertain time, of what journalism is supposed to look like." -- Nick Reding, author of Methland
Monica Hesse is a feature writer for the Washington Post. A finalist for a Livingston and James Beard Award, she is also the author of Girl in the Blue Coat. She lives in Washington, DC.
