The Truth About Fire: A Novel

Surveillance becomes a dangerous two-way street for the women at the center of this powerful literary debut probing the underworld of neo-Nazism in America's heartland. Told through the braided narratives of two women, who unwittingly hold each other's lives in their hands, this suspenseful novel reveals the explosive results when sinister secrets are sought by advocates of tolerance, and personal secrets stolen from them are turned into weapons of hate. Gillian Grace—a professor of modern German history, mother of a biracial teenage daughter, and political researcher into modern fascism—has long promoted pluralism in a multicultural world. Meanwhile, Lucy Wirth is trapped within the extremist realm of the Sons of the Shepherd, a sect with ties to German neo-Nazis. Gillian agrees to help graduate student Michael Landis infiltrate the Sons, whom he suspects in the murder of a Native American friend. But soon Gillian herself becomes an object of their surveillance, for Lucy has been coerced into an affair with the Sons' pastoral leader, then blackmailed into spying on Gillian and her daughter. Through the dangerous journey that follows, the truths of each woman's life poignantly resonate in the world of the other. At stake is the outcome of a biological terror plot that the Sons of the Shepherd are preparing to launch. Gillian and Lucy must choose whether to change their role from passive observers to engaged participants in the unfolding story, so that they may prevent their own lives, and countless others, from burning up in the Sons' flames of terror.