Description

Shocked by a five-month arson spree that left a Virginia county reeling, reporter Monica Hesse drove to Accomack to cover the trial of Charlie Smith who pled guilty to 67 counts of arson. But Smith wasn’t lighting fires alone: his crimes were galvanised by a twisted love story. Hesse uncovered the motives of this troubled addict and his accomplice, Tonya Bundick. In depicting the dangerous shift in their passionate relationship, Hesse brings to life the once-thriving coastal community and its distressed inhabitants, decimated by a punishing economy and increasingly terrified by a string of fires they could not explain. Incorporating this drama into the history of arson in the US, American Fire re-creates the anguished nights of this quiet county lit up in flames, evoking a microcosm of rural America—a land gutted before the fires began.

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

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Paperback / softback by Monica Hesse

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Shocked by a five-month arson spree that left a Virginia county reeling, reporter Monica Hesse drove to Accomack to cover... Read more

    Publisher: WW Norton & Co
    Publication Date: 22/06/2018
    ISBN13: 9781631494512, 978-1631494512
    ISBN10: 1631494511

    Number of Pages: 272

    Non Fiction , Crime & Thriller

    Description

    Shocked by a five-month arson spree that left a Virginia county reeling, reporter Monica Hesse drove to Accomack to cover the trial of Charlie Smith who pled guilty to 67 counts of arson. But Smith wasn’t lighting fires alone: his crimes were galvanised by a twisted love story. Hesse uncovered the motives of this troubled addict and his accomplice, Tonya Bundick. In depicting the dangerous shift in their passionate relationship, Hesse brings to life the once-thriving coastal community and its distressed inhabitants, decimated by a punishing economy and increasingly terrified by a string of fires they could not explain. Incorporating this drama into the history of arson in the US, American Fire re-creates the anguished nights of this quiet county lit up in flames, evoking a microcosm of rural America—a land gutted before the fires began.

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