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A review by geoffdgeorge
American Fire: Love, Arson, and Life in a Vanishing Land by Monica Hesse
fast-paced
A true-crime story from the rural Virginia coast that still felt familiar to this small-town boy from Iowa. Got it for Christmas five or six years ago, as memory serves, even though I hadn’t put it on any wishlist. I think my mom just thought I’d like it? Finally cracked it open about a month ago.
It’s a fast read. Gripping accounts here not just of the sixty-seven fires lit over the course of many months, the Bonnie-and-Clyde-esque pair of arsonists who set them, the volunteer firefighters who fought them, and the investigators who tracked them—but also of Accomack, Virginia, itself, the quiet community where the fires were happening, a community hollowed out since its height in the early 1900s by the same rural-to-urban capitalist forces that have gutted so many towns and counties nationwide. Fascinating to consider how such forces affected Accomack’s very ability to fight the fires (the shift from main-street business’s to big-box stores, for example, making it more difficult for an already-dwindling number of volunteer firefighters to hang “Be Back Soon” signs on their doors and run off).
It’s clear Hesse was embedded in the town for a while, in its diners, its bars, its administrative buildings, and its Facebook groups. There’s a whiff of Capote in Kansas, but here the crime is serial arson, committed seemingly (as odd as it might sound) for love.
It’s a fast read. Gripping accounts here not just of the sixty-seven fires lit over the course of many months, the Bonnie-and-Clyde-esque pair of arsonists who set them, the volunteer firefighters who fought them, and the investigators who tracked them—but also of Accomack, Virginia, itself, the quiet community where the fires were happening, a community hollowed out since its height in the early 1900s by the same rural-to-urban capitalist forces that have gutted so many towns and counties nationwide. Fascinating to consider how such forces affected Accomack’s very ability to fight the fires (the shift from main-street business’s to big-box stores, for example, making it more difficult for an already-dwindling number of volunteer firefighters to hang “Be Back Soon” signs on their doors and run off).
It’s clear Hesse was embedded in the town for a while, in its diners, its bars, its administrative buildings, and its Facebook groups. There’s a whiff of Capote in Kansas, but here the crime is serial arson, committed seemingly (as odd as it might sound) for love.