Flames and Smoke Visible: A Fire Fighter’s Tale

In heartfelt, unadorned prose, Lliteras (The Master of Secrets), a fiction writer, fire fighter, and Vietnam veteran, writes of his experience as a uniformed member of a fire department in Norfolk, Va. He writes of the hazards, challenges, and camaraderie of the job. Lliteras states, “Fire fighters are often present at this moment between life and death,” and then asks, “What does it mean to be when you are dying; what does it mean to be when you are no longer, because even in not being there is still being in having been?” When the author suffered a heart attack, he weighed the sum and total of his life, reevaluating his family and work experiences, replaying highlights of rescuing a man from a burning car and delivering a baby to grateful parents. Lliteras has been at war on two fronts, fighting both enemy soldiers and raging fires, and there is a hard-earned wisdom in these true-life episodes that grips our attention. (June)