The book I am currently reading for my English class is American Fire by Monica Hesse.
This book was chosen because I was interested in a crime/mystery story and stumbled upon this novel after a Google search. Non-fiction was the only requirement and I noticed that this specific book had rave reviews.
I have thoroughly enjoyed this book and can’t wait to see how this novel comes to an end. So far, I would rate this book a 4.5 out of 5 stars and recommend this book to others.
This book takes place in 2012 and spans over two years. It focuses on a rural city in the United States known as Accomack, located in Virginia. Within this small county, there has been an outbreak of fires and investigators have determined that there is an arsonist on the loose. With the small police force and limited capabilities of the firefighters, there have been no leads for investigators and they have no selected perpetrators.
At the time of the audio recording, I had read about 28 fires but now I have read about 34. This number continues to rise day after day and the people within Accomack have been struck with fear that their house will be the next to burn.
The author describes each fire with vivid imagery and portrays the struggles of the fire force with captivating diction. A quote that demonstrates this vivid imagery is seen on page 4, “Now the fire had lit the night like a flashbulb, causing the air around it to go bright and blurry and sending waves of heat onto her property line.”
This book does a fantastic job of enticing the reader. Being a quarter of the way through this book, I am very interested in how this book will play out.
