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American Fire: Love, Arson, and Life in a Vanishing Land

American Fire: Love, Arson, and Life in a Vanishing Land - Monica Hesse
I thought that this novel was an entertaining and interesting read. Focused on the arson fires that damaged Accomack County in 2012, this novel was not riveting nor was it mesmerizing as the fires damaged property and changed the lives of the citizens living nearby. This novel showed how two individuals, shook up their community, all in the name of love.
 
Everyone had personally been affected by these two individual’s actions: either by seeing a fire, calling a fire in, or had a fire touch their own property. These fires had become personal. Citizens were taking action by buying guns and binoculars and setting up their own watches, becoming their own vigilantes. The county was burning up. More law enforcement was called in, FBI and specialists were brought in to investigate but they just couldn’t seem to find a pattern or could find any suspects. Finally, as exhaustion was at its peak, they saw movement at one of their locations. Time moved slowly as the men patiently waited, they had to see flames before they could rush in towards their suspects. After all this time, they sat waiting for more fire to finally make a move. Fire! They moved quickly, radioing in as they ran through the night. They were surprised at who they found at the end of their journey. The suspect was a talker, his partner not so much. He loved her, oh he did. From those first words he spoke, you could feel what he felt about her. Her story doesn’t have the same tone as his.
 
I liked a lot of things about this novel including the writing and the way that the novel was put together. The author did a lot of research to compile this novel as there were interesting side stories and remarks throughout the novel. A true crime story, I liked reading all the details that were involved in such a case and how it all played out. It was frustrating, exhausting and annoying to the firefighters who were mainly volunteers to fight these arson fires day-in and day-out without much of a lead. I loved how the community came together during this tragedy: some took to the streets, some brought supplies to the firehouses and some found other ways to help their community. At the end of the novel, after 5.5 months of fires and 86 fires, they had finally apprehended their felons but the story was not over yet.