Nancy's Reviews > The Book of Fire

Last summer we vacationed along Lake Superior, kept indoors by the heavy smoke from Canadian wild fires. We know climate change has lead to more wildfires. And we know that climate change is rooted in human folly and greed, our inability to implement needed change to alter our impact on the earth.

The Book of Fire was inspired by a real fire in Greece and the stories of survivors. Lefreri’s novel imagines a family with deep roots in Greece who lose their home and a loved one after a real estate developer sets a fire to a woods, hoping to get the land for development.

The mother and wife tells the story of the fire in a journal, how she and her daughter survived by fleeing to the ocean, the hours they were in the sea waiting for rescue, the burns her daughter and husband suffered, the lose of a beloved family member. When she discovers the developer in the decimated forest, a rope around his neck, and near to death, she faces a moral crisis of decision.

Has this man killed himself, unable to live with the lives his rash act has taken? Or did survivors lynch him?

The artist husband’s burned hands and loss of the beloved forest drives him into depression, leaving his wife without his support. Meanwhile, the daughter encourages him to rejoin the living, and draws the burned forest as he had painted it in its glory.

This story of community and individual trauma and recovery asks who is guilty and what are the just deserts of guilt.

Thanks to the publisher for a free book.