The Evolution of Fire: Essays on Crisis and Becoming

Pelster (Limber), director of the creative writing program at Hamline University, delivers a raw and tender collection of essays about personal and global catastrophes. Recounting the literal and metaphorical fires that have shaped her life—from house fires to explosive family secrets—Pelster wonders if the world must experience crisis before necessary change happens. In the title essay, she reflects on learning shortly after having a baby that her husband had had multiple affairs. The revelation was a “spark” that “lit her life on fire”; soon afterward, she discovered her father’s drug addiction and lost her apartment in an electrical fire, leading her to conclude it was not her old life she wanted back but a “new way of being.” In “Good Animals,” she reflects on how extracting herself from the toxic men in her life required her to stop believing in changeability. Now, to have hope for the “burning planet” amid climate change, she wants to “resurrect [her] belief in change.” Pelster expertly captures the innocence of youth and beautifully renders the feeling of being on the precipice of something new: “She lies in bed, and the scorched plain of the future unfurls before her in the dark.” Poetic and candid, this is a welcome invitation to embrace the evolution that destruction can bring. (Apr.)