Woodburner is an amazing book. It's one of those stories that you're just driven forward to read, those stories that you find yourself thinking about even while doing the most unrelated things. The language hit a sweet spot between prose and poetry; his punctuation was like a drumbeat, carrying the cadence along at a melancholy clip.Besides being a fantastic writer, John Pipkin is a great teacher. His course "Researching the Historical Novel" was invaluable to me in my literary projects. This beautifully written literary novel depicts the incident in which Thoreau of pre-fame and pre-Walden days accidentally started a forest fire that burned 300 acres. I love Thoreau so found the chapters on him compelling. The author did a lot of research and has a nice light touch with it. The book alternates POV characters on the day of the fire, and some of them I found fascinating and some boring and began to skim them. This is a celebrated novel but is nonetheless very slow moving and only for true Thoreau fans.
story which kept my interest. Forest fire accidentally set and story of those who fight it.
—corleyg
Henry David Thoreau, aka David Henry Thoreau, needed a lecture from Smoky the Bear!
—jaybelle
Will be reading this soon for my in-person book club.
—peter
