Love Is a Burning Thing: A Memoir

Essayist St. Pierre debuts with a haunting account of her complicated relationship with her mother. A decade before St. Pierre was born, her mother, Anita, attempted suicide by self-immolation. “Did the fire change her? Or did it just activate who she’d always been,” the author wonders as she recounts growing up poor with her mother and younger brother, and shares how she longed for stability as the family moved into 20 different houses in eight different California cities before St. Pierre turned 13. Their living arrangements were as transient as Anita’s spiritual practices, which kept her “studying the divine” in ever-changing belief systems (at one point, she belonged to a New Age-y sect that believed in the divinity of Mount Shasta). Meanwhile, St. Pierre was left to study “the scripture of a mother adrift.” Such expressive language suffuses the account, melding with more academic material related to fire science, mental health, and women’s studies. St. Pierre recounts growing into adulthood, leaving home, and then returning after Anita’s arrest for setting fire to her home. After the second blaze, St. Pierre finally got through to Anita, and the pair started unraveling her lifelong mental health issues. This is a beautifully written and often-breathtaking examination of a difficult parent-child bond. Nicki Richesin, Dunlow, Carlson & Lerner. (May)