Christy Lefteri, the acclaimed author of THE BEEKEEPER OF ALEPPO and SONGBIRDS, returns with THE BOOK OF FIRE. This haunting, poignant novel revolves around an idyllic seaside village in Greece that is decimated by a wildfire and how the townsfolk --- and one family in particular --- find ways to rebuild.

Irini, a music teacher, still remembers the morning of the fire. She, along with her painter husband, Tasso, and their daughter, Chara, assembled a gorgeous table of breakfast foods in their garden. Tasso and Chara planned out their day, which would include a visit to the courtyard at the center of the village for a roller-skating party. But then their dog, Rosalie, starts to whimper and whine, gazing out into the forest and back at her family as if pleading with them to possess her same supernatural sense of danger. They spot the fire, the massive and oppressive wall of heat moving toward them as the animals scream and take flight. It is the last day the family will know innocence.

"Christy Lefteri is a meticulous, masterly writer who executes restraint as powerfully as she does confidence and assuredness. THE BOOK OF FIRE...cements her as a strong, inimitable voice in the literary fiction genre."

It is now five months later, and though Irini and her loved ones have fared better than most, they still bear the marks of that tragic day. Tasso, who ran back into the fire to look for his father, spends every day sitting in the garden, staring at his bandaged hands, covered in skin grafts and no longer able to paint. Chara, burned in the shape of a sprawling tree on her back, has aged what feels like 50 years. And Irini, who didn't suffer any physical effects from the fire, has lost her instruments, her home and, slowly before her eyes, her family.

So immense and all-consuming is the loss that when Irini walks through the burned remnants of the forest one day and spots the man who started it all mid-suicide attempt, she turns her back. Known in town as Mr. Monk for keeping his distance from the locals, he was planning to develop his property into a boutique hotel. In attempting to clear the land with a controlled fire, he effectively burned 300,000 acres of forest. When Irini sees him with a noose around his neck, she is angry and hurt. In this moment she becomes judge, jury and executioner, highlighting just how much the fire has changed her and how much of her humanity it has stolen.

When Mr. Monk is found and the police start to investigate, Irini --- desperate to work through her guilt and the moments that transformed her into someone so heartless and cruel --- begins to document it all: her childhood love of the forest, the beginnings of her romance with Tasso, who showed her the true beauty of the woods; the gruesome hours she and her daughter were forced to endure to survive; and the aftereffects, all leading to the moment that she watched the man who caused it all take his own life.

Irini’s journal, The Book of Fire, is a reckoning, a tangible chronicle of the fragility of innocence and the brutalities of trauma. But it is not just a record of the last five months. In digging through her memories of the forest, as well as her husband’s art --- Tasso, raised in the village by his botanist/activist father, had been painting the forest since he was young --- Irini recognizes that while one man set the fire, the forest actually had been “burning” for years due to overpopulation, climate change and negligence on the part of her fellow citizens.

Irini’s present-day chapters --- in which she navigates her husband’s desolation and depression, as well as her daughter’s loss of innocence --- are poignant and gripping, but it is in her journal that the real heart and grit of the novel are revealed. In painful, unflinching interstitials, Lefteri immerses readers in the fire: Irini and Chara racing away as the flames pound at their backs; the breathless moment when they reach the water, only to learn that the fire’s heat has turned it painfully hot and the smoke has clouded all the air above it, making rescue difficult and hope impossible; and, of course, the unimaginable moments when Irini must wonder what will happen if her husband never finds them and her daughter perishes in the water.

Even the days after their rescue are fraught: countless trips to the hospital in search of Tasso; painful dressing changes to the wounds on Chara's back; and the realization that everything is gone. Paired with the present-day investigation into Mr. Monk’s death, these chapters present a legacy of tragedy and blame, outrage and apathy, a perfect tinderbox of pain that will be our downfall.

Christy Lefteri is a meticulous, masterly writer who executes restraint as powerfully as she does confidence and assuredness. THE BOOK OF FIRE is a stunning example of her razor-sharp intellect, as well as her disarmingly earnest compassion, and cements her as a strong, inimitable voice in the literary fiction genre.