The Fire Gospels: A Novel

Erik Burns

The Fire Gospels has a fast-paced plot that rips across [the] characters as the fire does the land.
—New York Times Book Review

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Magnuson's strengths lie in his appealingly average characters and his ear for the easy speech rhythms of middle America. His enjoyable second novel (after "The Right Man for the Job", 1997) once again features a talented but underachieving regular guy, a typical sort whom circumstances force into atypical actions. Grady McCann, a bright but unmotivated maintenance man, likes to spend his after-work hours drinking in his local bar, the Liquid Forest. Unfortunately, Grady's hometown of McCutcheon, Wis., is suffering a season-long drought, and the oppressive sun has driven the folks in the Liquid Forestand all over McCutcheon County into a state of near panic. For relief from the drought, the townspeople have put their faith in the local weatherman, Lucky Littlefield, whom Grady considers a sanctimonious fakeand whom he suspects of sleeping with his wife, who's Lucky's assistant at the TV station. Like the archetypal rainmaker, Lucky, who wears Hawaiian shirts and encourages his audience to pray for precipitation, has ridden the drought to celebrity status. But when a strange meteorological phenomenon sparks a countywide forest fire, Grady, Lucky and all of McCutcheon find themselves fighting just to survive. The cataclysmic, almost biblical fire that occupies the novel's second half brings out the truest nature of Magnuson's cast. At times, however, it devours towns too quickly (is the entire state of Wisconsin devoid of disaster planning?) and draws the focus away from the small interactions that make McCutcheon so vivid. Magnuson's writing is strongest when he shows characters trying to go about their everyday livesdrinking, going to work, trying to get along and the quiet moments in this book remain the most revealing.

Library Journal

At the center of this apocalyptic novel, set in northern Wisconsin, is a TV weatherman/evangelist named Lucky Littlefield. Although he is an opportunist and a scoundrel, Littlefield comes to be regarded as a kind of spiritual saviour by his viewers during a period of dangerously prolonged drought. Grady McCann, a maintenance worker at a convalescent home, is the novel's working-class hero who recognizes Lucky for the fraud he is and is one of the few people around able to think clearly during this crisis. Magnuson ("The Right Man for the Job", HarperCollins, 1997) concludes the novel with an Old Testament-style cataclysma firestorm with 200' flames that sweeps through the parched countryside, leaving it both devastated and cleansed. Although the plotting in this novel occasionally strains credibility, it is nonetheless enjoyable and sustains drama. Recommended for libraries with large modern fiction collections. Patrick Sullivan, Manchester Community-Technical Coll., CT

Kirkus Reviews

An American gothic of a heartland holocaust and its effect on a bunch of pathetic antiheroes in a Wisconsin hamlet. Leaving the street-smart blend of hipness and dead-end helplessness of his debut novel, "The Right Man for the Job" (1997), Magnuson aims high but shoots low in a tale that tries to answer big questions about the roles of religion, faith, and hypocrisy in small-town America but uncovers mostly sexual frustration and a craven desire to escape responsibility. During a punishing summer drought that brings the inhabitants of McCutcheon, Wisconsin, to a spiritual low, TV weatherman Lucky Littlefield, an import from Georgia's Bible Belt, inserts some of his old-time religion into his forecast, a 'pray for rain' message that leads to massive group prayer sessions and good ratings for Littlefield's station. Only Grady McCann, a hard-drinking maintenance man at a senior-citizens' home, seems aware that Littlefield's feet are made of clay. Grady is also jealous because his beautiful, sexually repressed, Catholic wife, Erica, works as Littlefield's personal assistant. On a booze-soaked Friday night at the Liquid Forest Bar, Grady gets a black eye after Kate, a flirtatious local college student, beats off his clumsy attempt at seduction. Kate calls Erica and announces that Grady is having an affair with her. Erica in turn punishes Grady by telling him she's had an affair with Lucky, while, a few miles away, a stray meteorite ignites a field of dry grass and starts a fire that will destroy the town, drive Littlefield and Erica into madness, pair Grady with the vacillating Vietnam vet priest Father Mary, and ultimately bring a torrential rainfall that floods what hasn't already beenburnt. Magnuson's characters exhibit the loopy, comic small-town eccentricities of Harry Crews' Florida crackers. Too bad that, when they're not ranting futilely about the existence of God, these ones are too preposterously vicious to redeem this tortured allegory. An ambitious, exasperating effort that finds more glory in destruction than it does in the human spirit.