On Fire

Larry Brown

Jan 1994 · Sold by Algonquin Books

About this eBook

NOW WITH A FOREWORD BY RON RASH AND AN APPRECIATION BY DWIGHT GARNER

“One of the finest books I know about blue-collar work in America, its rewards and frustrations . . . If you are among the tens of millions who have never read Brown, this is a perfect introduction.” —Dwight Garner, The New York Times

On January 6, 1990, after seventeen years on the job, Larry Brown quit the Oxford, Mississippi, fire department to try writing full-time. In On Fire, he looks back on his life as a firefighter. His unflinching accounts of daily trauma—from the blistering heat of burning trailer homes to the crunch of broken glass at crash scenes—catapult readers into the hard reality that drove this award-winning novelist.

As a firefighter and fireman-turned-author, as husband and hunter, and as father and son, Brown offers insights into the choices men face pursuing their life’s work. And, in the forthright style we expect from Larry Brown, his narrative builds to the explanation of how one man who regularly confronted death began to burn with the desire to write about life.

Ratings and reviews

Through his thoughts and stories Brown gives you a feel for what it is like to be a firefighter in a small town. He loves his job and his fellow firefighters but yearns to be a writer. You get a complex picture by a man who is supremely talented in his writing and commenly heroic in his day job, as so many small town firefighters are.

About the author

Larry Brown was born and grew up in Oxford, Mississippi. A marine in the era of the Vietnam War, he joined the Oxford Fire Department in 1973. He resigned in 1990 at the rank of captain. The recipient of the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Award for Literature, the Mississippi Library Association Award for Fiction, and the Mississippi Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts, he was also the first two-time winner of the Southern Book Award for Fiction. He was the author of ten published works, including the highly acclaimed Facing the Music, Dirty Work, and Joe. Larry Brown died in 2004.