Item: American Fire
Rating: 4.00
Author: inlibrisveritas

by 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.

American Fire is an in depth look at an arson spree that started in 2012 in a small rural town of Accomack County Virginia.

I listen to books while I work. Most of the time I listen to a bit of one, get restless or my mind wanders and I end up taking breaks. On occasion, I’ll find that one book that I’m utterly hooked on and my headphones stay in my ears no matter what. American Fire is one of those books. I had heard of the case back when it made national news, but I didn’t follow it and before hitting play on the audio many of the details were nonexistent in my mind.

American Fire focuses on a spree of arsons that happened over five and half months in Accomack, Virginia. When I say spree I don’t mean five or six, I mean sixty-seven. This novel takes from the first fire to the very last, and a little beyond. The beginning introduces us to the different players (without stating who is involved in the crime itself) and gives us a nice up-close look at the area and its history. I went in expecting to read about just the crime but instead ended up learning quite a bit about the county’s economic struggles and a lot about the volunteer fire department.

The best part of this book is the un-bias look at the events. It’s told in a straightforward manner and it seems Hesse took the time to interview as many of the people involved as possible. It’s an easy read and the content seems to fly by once you get into it. The audiobook makes for an excellent listen as well and I certainly recommend it.

If you enjoy true crime or really like documentaries about crimes then this is one to check out. If you’re not too sure if true-crime is your thing, then I think this would be a good book to test the waters with. It’s not about a violent crime, it’s unbias, quick, and really gets into the motivations and backgrounds of the people involved. I do recommend that you go into this book a bit blind to the actual case so that you get the full enjoyment of finding out the who and the why.

American Fire

by Monica Hesse

Reviewed by inlibrisveritas on Sep 14, 2017

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