Atticus Books author Aaron Even will be at the Atticus Table (352) at AWP on Saturday from 10 to 11 to sign copies of his recent novel, He Comes In Fire. Come by to get your copy and to say hello!
SYNOPSIS
In the late 1990s a rash of mysterious arsons swept the Southern United States. For some months the fires (many striking African-American churches in rural communities) made the national news, raising fears of a racist criminal conspiracy. Then slowly they faded from the public eye, with no clear pattern, motive, or responsible group ever detected.
He Comes In Fire is a fictional, investigative composite of a country in flames, a dark and fast-paced crime drama that explores how the search for comprehensible answers and meaning can lead a people astray—into false assumptions, accusations, and terrible miscarriages of justice.
The setting is a semi-fictitious county (Zion) in central Virginia, a stark and fallen world of preachers, felons, and lost souls whose voices God no longer hears. When a misunderstood drifter (Lucas Sneed) tangles with a preacher struggling to lead a moral life (Jack Dixon), the two men collide in an unforgiving place teeming with sin, selfishness, and violence.
ADVANCE PRAISE
“Aaron R. Even’s HE COMES IN FIRE is as tightly wound and intricately constructed as a clock—a fresh and brilliant re-casting of the suspense novel by one of the South’s finest young writers. Here at last, for all of us who have been waiting for it, is a novel that is as beautifully written as it is gripping, a tale of religion, murder, drugs, buried treasure, and arson told with a literary sensibility. I read it breathlessly. I loved it.”
— Davis McCombs, author of Dismal Rock and Ultima Thule
“A gothic atmosphere looms over the mysterious world of HE COMES IN FIRE like dense storm clouds, imbuing the scenes with an electric tension. Aaron R. Even’s novel is compelling and suspenseful. Every character and description glows in the eerily beautiful light of his controlled, precise, and meticulously crafted prose.”
— Alexander Parsons, author of In the Shadows of the Sun
BIO
Aaron R. Even is an award-winning novelist and writer for television whose work has appeared on National Geographic, Discovery and Smithsonian Channels. His programs explore a broad range of scientific, historical and contemporary subjects from global volcanism and ancient civilizations to organized crime. His debut novel Bloodroot (Thomas Dunne Books) won the Associated Writing Programs (AWP) Novel Award in 2000.
