American Fire is an excellent summer vacation companion. It has all the elements of a lively crime procedural: courtroom drama, forensic trivia, toothsome gossip, vexed sex. It also happens to be a very good portrait of a region in economic decline. . . . As with S-Town and the best episodes of This American Life, Hesse has managed to wring tension and excitement out of a story with a known ending. -- Jennifer Senior - New York Times
The propulsive pleasure of American Fire rests in author Monica Hesse's decision not to force a thing. The book has the brisk diligence of big-city journalism (Hesse writes for the Washington Post) and the languid chattiness of the small town where she lived while researching it. . . . Hesse gathers the pieces but leaves connections to the reader. When they snap together, the feeling is a bit like gazing upon a blaze you've just lit. -- Karl Vick - Time
Hesse, who covered the arsons for The Washington Post, is an ace reporter, but she's an even better storyteller. American Fire is as propulsive as a crime thriller. A- -- Tina Jordan - Entertainment Weekly
In American Fire, journalist Monica Hesse faces . . . quandaries of interpretation, faulty memory and lies, and deals eloquently with the he-said-she-said elements of her story. . . . What emerges is a vivid depiction of a community that is struggling economically in present-day America, but is rich in its human connections. -- Ilana Masad - NPR.org
A brisk, captivating and expertly crafted reconstruction of a community living through a time of fear, confusion and danger. . . . Masterful. -- Scott W. Berg - Washington Post
One of the year's best and most unusual true-crime books. -- Randy Dotinga - Christian Science Monitor
Mesmerizing. . . . Hesse recounts the fires and their investigation and the subsequent trials with cinematic immediacy. -- Jonathan Miles - Garden & Gun
Accomack County, Virginia, is utterly unique, but not completely atypical of America's forgotten places: bypassed by progress on the wrong side of Chesapeake Bay, dotted with houses rotting into literal tinder. Hesse, a Washington Post reporter, finds true-crime gold here . . . . Hesse forgoes paint-by-numbers suspense, revealing the culprits early on before backing up into their hard-knock love story, their eventual arrest, and perceptive snapshots of an unusually vivid corner of drug-racked Red America. -- Boris Katchka - Vulture
American Fire is not only a twisted love story but also a portrait of Accomack County, Virginia, a once-wealthy farming community crumbling from economic hardship. -- Nora Horvath - Real Simple
Hesse enters the compelling narrative with restraint in probing, essayistic analyses. She tells the story of the fires and of the Eastern Shore and the people she got to know there with an earned familiarity that, at the same time, speaks of the unknowability of a vast, rapidly changing nation. -- Annie Bostrom - Booklist, starred review
A captivating narrative about arson, persistent law enforcers, an unlikely romantic relationship, and a courtroom drama. . . . Throughout, the author offers a nuanced portrait of a way of life unknown to most who have never resided on or visited the Eastern Shore. A true-crime saga that works in every respect. -- Kirkus Reviews, starred review
Washington Post reporter Monica Hesse has created a near-masterpiece in American Fire. This true crime book - about a series of arsons on the rural Virginia coast and the Bonnie-and-Clyde duo who committed them - is not just about the crimes themselves, but about the community those crimes affected. It's well-written and eye-opening, and I couldn't put it down. For fans of Hillbilly Elegy and In Cold Blood. -- Annie Butterworth Jones - Tallahassee Democrat
Washington Post reporter Hesse leads readers on an extended tour of a bizarre five-month crime spree in rural Accomack County, Va.: a series of over 80 arsons, of predominantly abandoned buildings, committed by a local couple. . . . A page-turning story of love gone off the rails. -- Publishers Weekly
American Fire is a wonderful book of page-turning, true-crime reportage, exquisitely reported with both humanity and humor. Books like this remind us, in an uncertain time, of what journalism is supposed to look like. -- Nick Reding, author of Methland
America in decline, a love gone berserk, and fire...lots and lots of it. If you pick up this book and open it to the first page, I double-dog dare you to put it down. -- Dennis Covington, author of Salvation on Sand Mountain
A rare combination of reportorial know-how and literary flair, American Fire is a page-turner. Crimes and chaos, detectives and firefighters, headlines and red herrings, and it all boils down to a Gothic love story gone wrong. You need time to investigate a story like this, following the police leads all the way to the hidden-in-plain-sight, off-kilter individuals generating the mayhem; you need space to tell a story like this, fact-based and evocative. People who think they don't like nonfiction will devour this book. People who love nonfiction will love it, too. -- Melissa Fay Greene, author of Praying for Sheetrock and The Underdogs
