American Fire: Love, Arson, and Life in a Vanishing Land

by Monica Hesse

Ultimately, the visible remnants of an arson are not what it has left behind but what it has taken away.

The beginnings of fires were always filled with adrenaline and anticipation. The ends of them were soot and weariness and fire hoses that needed to be cleaned.

“Do you have any weapons?” Kriz asked. “There’s a ChapStick in my bra,” Tonya told him,

It had become a story about relationships, and those nights when the person you love is suddenly the person who irritates you most, and when Steak-umms grow to represent not a dinner choice, but the symbol of financial independence, and finally getting it together to move up in the world.