How Fire Runs by CDW

I just finished reading Charles Dodd White’s latest novel How Fire Runs (Ohio UP, 2020) and what a timely read it is. Neo-Nazi white supremacist Gavin Noon sets up in a former mental hospital in a fictional Carter County, Tennessee and attempts to get into local politics after being scolded for leading his cronies in an unauthorized highway cleanup. Noon’s particular brand of evil does not stay banal for long and ruckus ensues. CDW does a great job of dramatizing local politics and reminding the reader that romantic foibles do not abate just because one is involved in making history. How Fire Runs is a page-turner, engages insider-outsider politics and the politics of race in the southern mountains, creates a gallery of well-wrought characters, includes great nature writing, and maintains a lightning pace without abandoning White’s gift for lyricism. How Fire Runs is a good one.

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