What Fire Brings, by Rachel Howzell Hall

After this cover caught my eye, the blurb intrigued me, and since my friend Robin Bradford has often mentioned her love of this author’s work, it was a given I would request an ARC.

Beware: rape; gaslighting; torture; dissociative fugues; depression.

What Fire Brings, by Rachel Howzell Hall

It is challenging to review books such as this; the line between sharing just enough to entice other readers, and revealing too much of what makes the experience so gripping, is very fine.

Despite enthusiastic recommendations, I had never read anything by the author before, and boy, was this quite the intense introduction to her work. The story has an almost claustrophobic feeling; partly because of the narrative voice–first person, present tense, and entirely from the point of view of a Black woman willingly putting herself in a dangerous situation–and how the book is structured around it; and partly because all I knew about the story than what the blurb below reveals:

Bailey Meadows has just moved into the remote Topanga Canyon home of thriller author Jack Beckham. As his writer-in-residence, she’s supposed to help him once again reach the bestseller list. But she’s not there to write a thriller—she’s there to find Sam Morris, a community leader dedicated to finding missing people, who has disappeared in the canyon surrounding Beckham’s property.

The missing woman was last seen in the drought-stricken forest known for wildfires and mountain lions. Each new day, Bailey learns just how dangerous these canyons are—for the other women who have also gone missing here…and for her. Could these missing women be linked to strange events that occurred decades ago at the Beckham estate?

As fire season in the canyons approaches, Bailey must race to unravel the truth from fiction before she becomes the next woman lost in the forest.

From the beginning of the story, it is clear that Bailey is under great stress; the mission she has taken on–searching for a missing Black woman by stepping into the world of wealthy white privilege–would be risky under almost any circumstances, but more so because, now that she’s moved into the Beckham estate, she is entirely alone and mostly cut off from the world outside.

“They don’t like it when Black folks wander up around here for too long.” (Chapter 1)

It would be bad enough, should Jack and those around him be innocent in the missing woman’s disappearance, for Bailey’s subterfuge to be discovered–at the very least, there may be legal repercussions over signing a contract under false pretenses. But it is increasingly clear that things are not what they seem, and that the danger is greater and more immediate than a mere breach of contract.

Then there’s the fact that Bailey is not the most reliable of narrators–or is she? Are the people around her really who they say they are? Who keeps calling her and then not speaking when she answers? Why can’t she make contact with her support network?

The feeling of foreboding builds very quickly; Bailey’s position is much more precarious than even she, with all her flights of imagination, could have imagined.

“How has this–putting my body at risk over and over again–become part of the job? How is constant danger and injury part of the journey to expose the lies, expose the truth? Since forever. Girl Reporter Nellie Bly acted insane to be committed to an insane asylum to see firsthand patients assaulted and faced with sexual violence, forced into ice-cold baths, compelled to eat rotten meat and drink contaminated water…if she could last for ten days at Bellevue Hospital, I can come close to asphyxiation after sipping a little coconut water.” (Chapter 9)

The worldbuilding is fantastic; there is a lot of historical context, local politics and landmarks, as well as current events, woven into the narrative in ways that feel very relevant to the characters; even climate change works to increase the feeling of foreboding in the narrative, as “fire season” in California is now, more or less, a year-round concern.

The story is set in May 2021, and the COVID-19 pandemic also plays a role; there’s even a scene taking a jab at the meaninglessness of adding “masks required” in the invitations to an event that involves food, drink, and shouted conversation at close quarters.

As one of the characters is a successful author, and Bailey’s cover story is that she wants to write, the exploitative nature of publishing, performative allyship, and the parasocial relationship between writers and fans are discussed, even as Bailey reflects private on how race and gender change how all of these affect writers.

“Why can’t she just write books about talking cats who watch over cupcakeries until one day she find a dead body in a vat of buttercream frosting? But make it funny. On, and make her white. Or Black but, you know, normal. Not Black Black.” “We can always kill what’s-her-face in the book. If writers are anything, we’re petty as fuck” (Bailey and Jack, chapter 16)

There are a few passages from one of the books-within-the-book interspersed in the narrative; the formatting of the ARC didn’t make the transitions between Bailey’s narration and these passages very easy to follow; this may have been done on purpose, to increase the feeling of disorientation while reading, but I hope the published edition has some sort of cue to indicate the switches back and forth.

The last few chapters are a crescendo of twists, revelations, and further twists, ending in an explosive climax that left me breathless.

My only real quibble with the novel is the aftermath. The universe is righted, the villains pay, and we can assume that good things will come to those who deserve them, though this is not made explicitly clear; but the ending is bittersweet more than anything else, and I wanted more for our heroine. I wanted her full and unequivocal happiness.

What Fire Brings gets a 9.00 out of 10