Crime Time: American Fire

Can’t get enough of the true crime genre? Looking for something to do after binging shows like Killer Inside: The Mind of Aaron Hernandez, McMillions and The Vow? Then join the Livingston Public Library for the brand new virtual book club, Crime Time. Crime Time is a true crime and crime adjacent book club where readers will explore everything from historical crime to unsolved mysteries.

October's title is: American Fire by Monica Hess.  Copies are available for checkout at the main desk, one month ahead of meeting.

Synopsis:

"The arsons started on a cold November midnight and didn't stop for months. Night after night, the people of Accomack County--once the richest rural county in the nation--waited to see which building would burn down next, regarding one another with compassion at first, and, later, suspicion. Vigilante groups sprang up, patrolling the rural coast. Volunteer firefighters slept at their stations. Local police were stretched thin. The arsonist seemed to target abandoned buildings, and by the dozen they were going up in flames. Over two years of investigation, Monica Hesse uncovered the motives of troubled mechanic Charlie Smith and his struggling accomplice, girlfriend Tonya Bundick. In depicting dangerous shifts in their fraught relationship, Hesse introduces the once-thriving coastal community, decimated by a punishing economy and increasingly afraid. American Fire re-creates the anguished nights when this quiet county was set on fire, evoking a microcosm of rural America--a land gutted before the fires even began."