A New York Times Notable Book of the Year A Washington Post Notable Book of the Year One of Amazon’s 20 Best Books of the Year Named one of the Best Books of the Year by Buzzfeed, Bustle, NPR, NYLON, and Thrillist Finalist for the Goodreads Book Award (Nonfiction) Finalist for the Edgar Award (Best Fact Crime) A Book of the Month Club Selection A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice Selection
“A brisk, captivating and expertly crafted reconstruction of a community living through a time of fear.... Masterful.” —Washington Post
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.
“One of the year’s best and most unusual true-crime books” (Christian Science Monitor), American Fire brings to vivid life the reeling county of Accomack. “Ace reporter” (Entertainment Weekly) Monica Hesse spent years investigating the story, emerging with breathtaking portraits of the arsonists—troubled addict Charlie Smith and his girlfriend, Tonya Bundick. Tracing the shift in their relationship from true love to crime spree, Hesse also conjures the once-thriving coastal community, decimated by a punishing economy and increasingly suspicious of their neighbors as the culprits remained at large. Weaving the story into the history of arson in the United States, the critically acclaimed American Fire re-creates the anguished nights this quiet county lit up in flames, evoking a microcosm of rural America—a land half-gutted before the fires began.
Monica Hesse is a feature writer for the Washington Post. Winner of the Edgar Award and a finalist for a Livingston and James Beard Award, she is also the author of Girl in the Blue Coat. She lives in Washington, DC.
Table of Contents
Preface xi
1 "Charge That Line!" 3
2 "The South Starts Here" 12
3 "Orange in the Sky" 21
4 Charlie 35
5 Monomanie Incendiaire 43
6 Tonya 50
7 "Like A Ghost" 57
8 "Tell Us What You Know about That" 71
9 Charlie and Tonya 82
10 SchröDinger's Evidence 90
11 The Eastern Shore Arsonist Hunters 97
12 "I've seen Enough Ass to Know" 105
13 "Like Hell Was Coming Up Through the Ground" 113
14 Tonya And Charlie 120
15 "They're Not Hunters At All" 127
16 "I didn't Light Them All" 131
17 "Someday they'll go Down Together" 138
18 "Everybody Has A Reason For Why They Do Things in Life" 144
From the bestselling, award-winning author of The Year of Magical Thinking: In this "arresting amalgam of memoir and historical timeline” (The Baltimore Sun), Didion—a native
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER •A work of stunning frankness about losing a daughter, from the bestselling, award-winning author of The Year of Magical Thinking and Let Me Tell You What I
NATIONAL BESTSELLER •Didion's "reportorial pieces afford the pleasures of literature.... She is an expert geographer of the landscape of American public culture" (The New York Times Book
A shimmering novel of innocence and evil: the gripping story of two American women in a failing Central American nation, from the bestselling, award-winning author of The Year of Magical Thinking
The master of the new noir, Dennis Lehane magnificently evokes the dignity and savagery of working-class Boston in this terrifying tale of darkness and redemption.
“[Lehane has] emerged from the whodunit ghetto as a broader and more substantial talent....When it comes to keeping readers exactly where he wants them, Mr. Lehane offers a bravura
New York Times bestselling author Dennis Lehane returns to the streets of Mystic River with this love story wrapped in a crime story wrapped in a journey of faith—the basis for the major motion
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Gone Girl, and the basis for the major motion picture starring Charlize Theron
Una historia adictiva y formidablemente escrita que, a través del misterio, indaga en el papel de la memoria y nos adentra en los sentimientos más crudos del ser
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The “mercilessly entertaining” (Vanity Fair) instant classic “about the nature of identity and the terrible secrets that can survive
Women across America laughed, cried, and reconnected with their friends after reading Kristin Hannah's smash hit, Firefly Lane. Now, in True Colors, she explores the poignant, powerful, complex world
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The author of the cherished bestseller On Mystic Lake returns with a poignant, funny, luminous novel about a mother and daughter—the complex ties that bind them,
From the New York Times bestselling author The Four Winds, a moving, powerful novel about the fragile threads that bind together our lives and the astonishing potential of second chances
