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WORK TITLE: A FIRE SO WILD
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WEBSITE: https://sarahsgrossman.com
CITY: Los Angeles
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COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY: American
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PERSONAL
Born in New York, NY; married.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Journalist and writer. Worked as a reporter for Huffington Post.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
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Sarah Ruiz-Grossman is an author and journalist. She was a reporter for Huffington Post before turning to fiction writing. She was born and raised in New York City but now lives in Los Angeles with her husband.
A Fire So Wild, Ruiz-Grossman’s debut, came out of her experience as a journalist covering climate change and social justice issues, as well as her own experience of living in Berkeley, California. The novel imagines a wildfire making its way toward Berkeley and the social divisions that erupt as people decide how to respond. Characters include wealthy homeowner Abigail, construction worker Sunny, and high school activists Xavier and Mar. In an interview in Mindful Librarian, Ruiz-Grossman wrote that she hopes her novel “serves as a wake-up call to the stark class divisions in who gets to recover from disaster and who gets left behind.”
Reviewers disagreed over this debut. Kayla Maiuri, writing in New York Times Book Review, called the novel “bracing” and praised Ruiz-Grossman for how she “balances the social and political, the emotional and physical, with insight and precision.” Maiuri was particularly enthusiastic about the how the reader sees the characters’ various dramas “unfurl and collide.” Maiuri did acknowledge, however, that the “political discourse can feel forced upon the narrative.” A reviewer in Kirkus Reviews agreed with that last point, writing that “even environmentalists may find its tone overly didactic,” but they did acknowledge that the novel is “timely.”
A writer in Publishers Weekly was more positive, calling the book captivating and writing that the “complex characterizations and realistic scenarios converge to deliver a satisfying punch.” Leah Strauss, in Booklist, echoed that assessment, describing the story as an “engaging tale” that “offers a vivid exploration of modern-day disparities.”
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BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, January 1, 2024, Leah Strauss, review of A Fire So Wild, p. 23.
Kirkus Reviews, March 1, 2024, review of A Fire So Wild.
New York Times Book Review, February 18, 2024, Kayla Maiuri, “Flare-Up,” review of A Fire So Wild, p. 10.
Publishers Weekly, December 18, 2023, review of A Fire So Wild, p. 60.
ONLINE
Berkeleyside, https://www.berkeleyside.org (February 20, 2024), Joanne Furio, author interview.
Mindful Librarian, https://mindfullibrarian.substack.com (February 20, 2024), author interview.
Nerd Daily, https://thenerddaily.com/ (February 16, 2024), Elise Dumpleton, author interview.
Sarah Ruiz-Grossman website, https://sarahsgrossman.com/ (April 22, 2024).
Sarah S. Grossman is a writer and former reporter at HuffPost, where she covered the climate crisis and other social justice issues. Born and raised in New York City, she lives in Los Angeles.
Sarah Ruiz-Grossman
SARAH RUIZ-GROSSMAN is a writer and former reporter at HuffPost, where she covered the climate crisis and other social justice issues. Born and raised in New York City, she lives in Los Angeles with her husband and their pit bull.
Q&A: Sarah Ruiz-Grossman, Author of ‘A Fire So Wild’
Elise Dumpleton·Writers Corner·February 16, 2024·3 min read
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We chat with debut author Sarah Ruiz-Grossman about A Fire So Wild, which follows a wildfire creeping toward Berkeley, California, igniting tensions as characters from all walks of life confront the injustices lying beneath the city’s surface.
Hi, Sarah! Can you tell our readers a bit about yourself?
I’m a writer and former reporter at HuffPost, where I covered the climate crisis and other social justice issues for over six years. Born and raised in New York City, I currently live in Los Angeles, California.
When did you first discover your love for writing and stories?
I was lucky to grow up steeped in books – at my mother’s, I read in bed every night before going to sleep, and at my father’s, each weekend I had to do an hour of reading before I could earn TV time. Books were an escape from what I would later come to recognize as my budding anxiety and fear of loneliness — I read everything from Calvin and Hobbes cartoons to Nancy Drew mysteries to WWII tomes like The Winds of War recommended by my grandmother. The urge to write came in high school, where I loved picking apart my favorite books line by line in English class. After college, I gravitated toward jobs that had me writing every day, first in nonprofit communications and then as a journalist. I finally made the jump to writing fiction during the pandemic, and A Fire So Wild is my first novel.
Quick lightning round! Tell us:
The first book you ever remember reading: Le Petit Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
The one that made you want to become an author: The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison
The one that you can’t stop thinking about: The Swimmers, Julie Otsuka
Your debut novel, A Fire So Wild, is out February 20th! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?
Urgent critique of climate apocalypse
What can readers expect?
A suspenseful account of a wildfire approaching a city, and three families whose lives are upended as the heat and smoke descend, raising tensions between the haves and have-nots, and digging up the injustices lying under the city’s surface.
Where did the inspiration for A Fire So Wild come from?
As a journalist for HuffPost, I covered our worsening fire seasons in Northern California year after year. Speaking to survivors on the ground, including after the state’s deadliest wildfire in Paradise in 2018, the idea came for a story of three families living in Berkeley: one in a mansion in the hills, one in affordable housing in the flats, and a couple in their van by the shore, with a wildfire growing in the distance.
Were there any moments or characters you really enjoyed writing or exploring?
I had a lot of fun writing the two high schoolers, who are budding climate activists falling in love. Their passion for the planet and youthful conviction that more must be done was a refreshing counter to the cynicism of adults, who are often too afraid of their own complicity to face the problem head-on.
See also
Q&A: Kristin Beck, Author of ‘Courage, My Love’
This is your debut published novel! What was the road to becoming a published author like for you?
It was a rollercoaster! This is the second novel I wrote in full — the first I pitched to dozens of agents but wasn’t able to get representation. By the time I received my last rejection, I was already part way through writing this book, so I told myself to just finish it and give one more go to getting published. Luckily, I was able to find an agent, and then she was able to sell it to an editor within a few months, and here we are nearly two years later, with the book coming out. All this to say, don’t let rejections stop you from writing — the road can be long, but it is worthwhile if writing is what you love.
What’s next for you?
I’m working on my next novel!
Lastly, are there any 2024 book releases that you’re looking forward to?
I just finished reading Susan Muaddi Darraj’s Behind You Is The Sea, which is a novel following the interwoven stories of Palestinian Americans in Baltimore. It is urgent and gorgeous and I highly recommend it.
What Writers Read: Sarah Ruiz-Grossman
A Fire So Wild is for anyone who cares about the climate crisis and questions how they can build a meaningful life in a world on fire
KATY O.
FEB 20, 2024
Hello readers!
A Fire So Wild by Sarah Ruiz-Grossman is one of the two books that made me decide to start this newsletter series ~ a book that has such compelling messages about climate change and class and wealth disparity that I want to make sure I do my part to shout about it from the rooftops and let the whole world know it exists. When I finished the last page back in December, I immediately texted my climate justice warrior friend and said, “this doesn’t release until February 20, but put it on your TBR immediately - you will LOVE IT!” ~ it’s that kind of book. The kind that invokes outrage and passion and an urge to DO something.
I hope you enjoy meeting Sarah ~ let’s jump right in!
Give us a brief elevator pitch for your book
My debut novel, A Fire So Wild, is about a wildfire that creeps toward Berkeley, California, and three families — one living in the hills, one in affordable housing in the flats, and another in a van by the shore — whose lives are upended as heat and smoke descend upon the town, exposing the cracks in their lives and the injustices lying beneath the city’s surface.
This book is for anyone who cares about the climate crisis and questions how they can build a meaningful life in a world on fire. The story is based on reporting I did on the ground as a journalist for HuffPost for six-plus years in Northern California. I hope it serves as a wake-up call to the stark class divisions in who gets to recover from disaster and who gets left behind.
What was the most interesting / challenging / rewarding (pick one!) part of writing A Fire So Wild?
The most challenging part of writing this book was trying to do justice to the stories that survivors of devastating wildfires shared with me in my years of reporting for HuffPost. I met families as they sifted through the ash that used to be their homes in Santa Rosa, Sonoma, in 2017. I met others months after the Paradise wildfire of 2018, which killed dozens and flattened almost the entire community in a matter of hours. One father who lost his home was still sleeping in a shelter, months later. Another family went from living in a three-bedroom house to squeezing two parents and two kids into a trailer in their grandparents’ yard. One couple who’d been living in a tent had to flee from the fire on foot. Each of these stories was threaded through the novel, carried on in its characters — the canaries in the coal mine of our planet on fire.
What are the three most recent books that you have loved?
Sarah Ruiz-Grossman’s recommended reads
True Biz by Sara Nović. In this fast-paced, heartfelt novel, we follow two students and an educator at a residential school for the deaf as they seek to save the school from shuttering. The characters are tenderly drawn, with raw responses to a fucked-up world. Each chapter opens with a page on deaf culture, history or sign language, a delightful way to learn more about the deaf community, which as a hearing person, I knew far too little about.
How Far The Light Reaches by Sabrina Imbler. In this electric memoir, Imbler walks us through their upbringing in the California Bay Area, their discovery of their sexual and gender identities, their relationship with their mother, and more — all through the lens of different sea creatures. Fascinating and moving.
Above Ground by Clint Smith. This poetry collection takes an unflinching and tender look at living and parenting in a beautiful, flawed world wrecked by racism, capitalism, war and greed-fueled climate disaster. It is worth reading one poem at a time, maybe one poem a day, to keep your heart in touch with this earth and the gift of our very short, precious, human experience of it.
A fire in the Berkeley Hills forces reckoning over wealth inequality in pointed new novel
In Sarah Ruiz-Grossman’s ‘A Fire So Wild,’ the homes of rich, hypocritical Berkeley Hills liberals burn down — as does the Rose Garden — in a wildfire that forces residents “to reckon with the cracks in the lives they’ve built.”
By Joanne Furio
Feb. 20, 2024, 3:26 p.m.
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Sarah Ruiz-Grossman. Courtesy: Sarah Ruiz-Grossman
In this version of Berkeley, summer nights are “hot and sticky,” Victorian houses dot the Berkeley Hills and eight lanes of Highway 101 run along the waterfront. After a wildfire burns thousands of homes in the hills and the Berkeley Rose Garden, protesters gather in a CVS parking lot and demand turning some of the charred single-family plots into low-income housing. The crowd chants, “Rebuild a Better Berkeley! Berkeley for all! Share the wealth! Nuestra casa es tu casa!”
This is the Berkeley depicted in the new book, A Fire So Wild, a work of fiction. Sarah Ruiz-Grossman wrote the novel her first in 2021 during the pandemic isolation. She and her partner lived on the second floor of a house in the Berkeley Hills from the summer of 2020 to the summer of 2022. On Feb. 20 at 7 p.m., Ruiz-Grossman will read from the book and sign copies at Books Inc.
While Ruiz-Grossman has taken liberties (and made some errors) with some of the city’s attributes, she insists a class battle due to climate change is bound to happen — in Berkeley and elsewhere — due to economic inequities. Ruiz-Grossman gained some insights into the aftermaths of wildfires when she worked for the Huffington Post as a social justice and climate change reporter in the Bay Area. After selling the book in 2022, she has been writing novels full-time.
On a phone call from her home in Venice in Southern California, Ruiz-Grossman, 33, talked to Berkeleyside about how she came to the subject matter, her knowledge of local liberal politics and how the climate scenario is likely to unfold in the coming years.
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
As part of your reporting, you went to Santa Rosa and Paradise after the wildfires and spoke to survivors who shared their stories with you. What were some of their truths you incorporated into the novel?
Courtesy: Harper Collins Publishers
One of the experiences that I tried to translate through the character of Sunny involved an unhoused couple who had been living in a tent at the time that the fires came through Paradise and had to flee the fire by foot. They were given a trailer to live in by a good Samaritan who wanted to help, but the good Samaritan phase after a disaster fades pretty quickly. Time goes on and the status quo comes back into play. By the time I met this couple they were being told by the owner of the trailer that they had to go. They end up being people who have been neglected and don’t get any services.
Similarly I was able to interview a pretty well-off upper-class lesbian couple who came through the fire OK. They lost their home and were placed into a rental they could afford because they had really good insurance, but internally the system of the family had completely fallen apart. One of the parents had to take off because she couldn’t get through a normal day of work. I tried to translate that there isn’t anybody who comes out of a wildfire unimpacted. They’re all affected whether they have it together financially or not.
Why did you choose to set the book in Berkeley?
Berkeley is a really special place and community. It has a deep history of social justice, protest and progressive politics. It also has a lot of complications, with a thriving university and a thriving housing crisis with generations of folks who’ve lived there for a really long time. For a community that loves to celebrate its diversity, you see a lot of folks being pushed out in favor of tech wealth. All those things come into play when you look at housing and climate, the people and neighborhoods. Berkeley had all the pieces to tell the story. And I lived here so I was able to have my feet on the ground.
In a couple of places, you refer to the hot summers in Berkeley. Typically, summer temperatures rarely go higher than the low 70s. I’m guessing that in the novel you’re envisioning a hotter future?
No. I was referencing the summer of 2020. There was a very intense heat wave that covered the whole area. It was when the August Complex in 2020 farther north was sending ash into the region and the sky turned orange. Because Berkeley was not used to having such heat, we didn’t have any air conditioning in our apartment. It was so hot but we couldn’t open the windows because there was ash outside and it was bad for our lungs. We didn’t have an air purifier. It’s not every day, but this is the reality now in the Bay Area.
You seem to come down especially hard on rich liberals who live in the hills, who are depicted as well-intentioned hypocrites who will throw their money at do-good causes, like affordable housing, one of the main themes in the book. They drive Teslas, sip champagne, laugh at bad jokes during fundraisers, “never get their hands dirty” and live “cookie-cutter lives.” Have you known people like this?
I had neighbors when we were living in Berkeley who were lovely people and yet were in agreement with our local council person Susan Wengraf in opposing a state proposal that would allow two ADUs (Accessory Dwelling Units) per parcel to provide more affordable housing. They said they were worried about parking: Will there be enough spaces for all involved? Could it be a fire hazard? At the end of the day it was typical NIMBY (Not In My Backyard). They also like to think that they care about the world and are good people. At the end of the day you have to decide if you are able to look at your own complicity or not. [Ed. note: Read Berkeleyside’s coverage of the debate over whether to limit ADUs in the Berkeley Hills and how new housing could affect emergency evacuations from hillside neighborhoods.]
The poster child for that certain type of white liberal is one of the book’s main characters, Abigail, who lives in a house with a pool in the hills with an African American wife and bi-racial son who’s a senior at Berkeley High. She’s a queer, Jewish lawyer who “knows the right people” and pays a therapist $260 per hour to learn how to be grateful. She wears Eileen Fisher and carries a tote that says, “Give a Shit! Don’t Eat Meat!” Without spoiling the ending, she ends up being the character who undergoes the greatest arc in the book.
Abigail undergoes significant change in the end and you have to wonder what reasons are behind it. Is it because she realizes the role she plays as a cog in the system or that she’s lost the high opinion of her spouse and her child and makes changes in order to look better in their eyes. Does it matter as long as she does the right thing?
By the way, Berkeley just got its first Eileen Fisher store, on Fourth Street. So you were onto something there.
That’s funny.
You also weave in an Indigenous perspective into the book. The site of a planned high rise is a shellmound in West Berkeley. Clearly, you must have been inspired by a real-life plan to build a 260-unit building on contested Ohlone land on Fourth Street. Unlike the high rise in the novel that dedicated one unit to affordable housing, the Fourth Street project proposes 50% affordable housing. Does that make you feel hopeful?
It does. Berkeley’s a place where there is a hearty enough activist community that often won’t let folks get away with not doing the right thing. Berkeley has already shown itself to be a place where we can ask, how do we move through this climate crisis and housing crisis in a way that’s more sustainable.
How do you see the coming years? Do you believe, as your book implies, that the kind of class battles that take place in the book will come to a head during climate crises — even in a place like progressive Berkeley?
Yes, they’ll certainly come to a head. I don’t know if I feel optimistic about things being resolved in a way that creates more equity versus more inequality. If we look at the past decades in our country as a whole, capitalism has only served to widen the gap between the wealthiest and the bottom half of the population who are living more and more precariously, with less well paid and fewer stable jobs. I do know that the climate crisis is going to bring a lot of these problems of racism and poverty and inequality and job conditions to a head, certainly. The growing labor movement gives me hope. Though they’re entrenched in powerful corporations working against this as we’ve seen. We’ll see how that shakes out.
As tough as you are on some of the characters — Abigail in particular — you redeem most of them by the novel’s end. For readers who exhibit some of your characters’ undesirable traits, what would you want them to take away from this book?
I hope that people don’t come away thinking that I believe I know all the right answers here. We’re all reckoning with how to live ethical lives in a very unethical system of white supremacist, hetero-patriarchical capitalism. There are not many simple moral choices. I make decisions every day, like getting on a plane to go see family that are counter to the values I espouse on climate. What I hope people come away with is taking a more honest look at these occasions and owning how we participate in the crisis that we criticize and that we do the right thing to the extent that we can in terms of how we vote, how we prioritize these issues and who we stand up for in as small a circle as our friends our family our workplaces.
Ruiz-Grossman, Sarah A FIRE SO WILD Harper/HarperCollins (Fiction None) $25.99 2, 20 ISBN: 9780063305427
Brief scenes, spanning the perspectives of diverse characters representing Berkeley's socioeconomic strata, sound an alarm about the threats posed by climate change.
Having covered climate and social justice issues for HuffPost, first-time novelist Ruiz-Grossman is well equipped to depict the devastation wrought by the wildfires that recently threatened heavily settled areas of California. Here, a conflagration suddenly leaps into a bougie neighborhood in the Berkeley Hills. Directly in the line of fire is a soiree organized as a combo birthday party/fundraiser by Abigail, a committed if tone-deaf affordable housing advocate. She's hoping to convince a developer to include low-income housing in a building nearing completion. In attendance are Abigail's partner, Taylor, a one-time tech whiz who cashed out to become a stay-at-home mom, and their son, Xavier, now a high school senior. Recognizing that her role has become redundant, Taylor is edging into a what's-it-all-about phase. As the marriage falters, Xavier falls for a classmate, Mar, a climate activist whose passion for ecology is matched by her ardor for social justice. Tossed into the mix is a mutually devoted homeless couple: Willow, a wan, dispirited 34-year-old survivor of childhood sexual trauma, and her dogged protector, Sunny, a sometime construction worker who wears a locket with her photo on a chain around his neck. The characters are introduced via brief glimpses framed within their individual points of view, but it's a safe bet that--as in a formulaic disaster movie--their paths will eventually cross. Apart from one genuinely dramatic scene--caught unaware mid-tryst, the teens have no choice but to hurl themselves out a second-story window--the interactions unfurl ploddingly. The character sketches are thin, amounting to a collection of traits. The depiction of the mutually devoted van-dwelling couple, in particular, is sentimental to the point of insulting.
Though the novel is timely, even environmentalists may find its tone overly didactic.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2024 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
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"Ruiz-Grossman, Sarah: A FIRE SO WILD." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Mar. 2024, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A784238577/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=69bd53ef. Accessed 4 Apr. 2024.
In Sarah Ruiz-Grossman's debut novel, ''A Fire So Wild,'' the lives of a disparate group of people are critically linked by a terrifying blaze.
A FIRE SO WILD, by Sarah Ruiz-Grossman
In her bracing debut novel, ''A Fire So Wild,'' Sarah Ruiz-Grossman chronicles a community in Berkeley, Calif., on the brink of personal and environmental calamity as a wildfire threatens life as they know it.
The story follows a diverse cast, each character navigating his or her own private crises, be they marital, economic or existential. We open with Abigail, an out-of-touch affordable housing advocate nearing her 50th birthday, contemplating her career during a morning swim in Lake Anza. Abigail is feeling disillusioned by her life's work when an idea sparks: She will turn her birthday party into a fund-raiser for a mixed-income housing project, hosting the event at her friend's hillside mansion. Next we meet Sunny and Willow, a homeless couple sleeping in a van parked on Berkeley's shoreline. Working in construction, Sunny builds extravagant homes in the hills, all the while praying that he and Willow land a spot in the affordable housing units designated in a new high-rise (the very project Abigail is working on). Meanwhile, Willow fatefully meets Abigail at a soup kitchen and is hired to cater Abigail's fund-raiser. Then there is Abigail's wife, Taylor, a start-up founder turned stay-at-home mother who is feeling ''hollowed out'' by her life and scheming to leave Abigail after her birthday. Their teenage son, Xavier, suspects a rift between them, but avoids interfering. He, instead, focuses on the transfer student Mar, who's grappling with a family issue of her own: Her parents, Gabriel and Camila, have separated.
Everybody is struggling in some way, and all the while, the wildfire looms.
Matters eventually escalate the night of the fund-raiser. While the party is underway, Berkeley residents receive emergency alerts warning them to evacuate. Those at the fund-raiser, including Abigail, Taylor and Willow, begin to scramble, but Xavier is down the street, having stealthily invited Mar to his house. They are alone and without cell service, ignorant of what is to come. As the novel's assorted cast races to escape the blaze, their lives become critically linked.
Ruiz-Grossman balances the social and political, the emotional and physical, with insight and precision. Her disparate characters all hail from different worlds, and it's a horrific thrill to witness their dramas unfurl and collide. Through the juxtapositions they experience -- like Sunny laboring over hilltop mansions, wondering if the wealthy homeowners will consider ''the workers whose sweat had dripped into the slats of their wood floors, whose skin cells were embedded in their windowsills'' -- Ruiz-Grossman highlights gross economic disparity and the falsity of upward mobility.
At times, the novel's political discourse can feel forced upon the narrative, resulting in moments of stilted dialogue and formulaic characters. Ruiz-Grossman's writing is finest when she tackles the devastation of climate change. Even before the fire bursts onto the scene, her descriptions of the natural world are bewitching and distressing. ''The chalky rocks, wild tree roots and long grass that used to be hidden beneath the line of the water were all visible now,'' Abigail thinks of a lake depleting under a severe drought. ''They looked naked, exposed, like they hadn't asked for any of this.'' Her prose is equally sharp and evocative when the fire finally does arrive: ''A burnt-orange sky hung low, as though night had fallen and a hellish sun had risen in its place.''
There's a second fire later in the novel, this time ''not coming down from above, but sparked from below'' as a few characters take radical action to send a message. It's a satisfying punch that probes a question at the core of ''A Fire So Wild'': When disaster strikes, whom does society rescue and whom does it abandon?
A FIRE SO WILD | By Sarah Ruiz-Grossman | Harper | 199 pp. | $25.99
Kayla Maiuri is the author of ''Mother in the Dark.''
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Maiuri, Kayla. "Flare-Up." The New York Times Book Review, 18 Feb. 2024, p. 10. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A782850505/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=74e84d66. Accessed 4 Apr. 2024.
A Fire So Wild
Sarah Ruiz-Grossman. Harper, $25.99 (208p) ISBN 978-0-06-330542-7
Ruiz-Grossman's captivating debut chronicles a wildfire's impact on a diverse set of tesidents of Berkeley, Calif. Abigail, 50, organizes a fund-raiser at a friend's house in the Berkeley Hills for a mixedincome apartment building on the city's west side. She hires Willow, a young woman who ran away from home as a teen and who Abigail met while volunteering at a soup kitchen, to serve drinks and food at the party. Willow lives in a van with her boyfriend, Sunny, a fellow runaway, who picks up occasional construction work. The night of the gala, Willow warns Abigail that a series of fires are getting dangerously close to town. Abigail ignores her, even as an ominous glow creeps closer to the gathering, until she receives an evacuation notice on her phone. Meanwhile, Abigail's teenage son, Xavier, is home nearby with his girlfriend, Mar. A tense parallel narrative develops involving Abigail's delayed reaction, Willow and Sunny's effort to escape the blaze, and the disasters impact on Xavier and Mar. It's a gripping pageturner with a surprising twist, as a set of disgruntled survivors form an unlikely alliance and take drastic action. The complex characterizations and realistic scenarios converge to deliver a satisfying punch. Agent: Sharon Pel/etier, Dystel, Goderich & Bourret. (Feb.)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2023 PWxyz, LLC
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"A Fire So Wild." Publishers Weekly, vol. 270, no. 51, 18 Dec. 2023, p. 60. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A779652472/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=5ad1d350. Accessed 4 Apr. 2024.
A Fire So Wild. By Sarah Ruiz-Grossman. Feb. 2024. 208p. Harper, $25.99 (9780063305427); e-book (9780063305441).
Ruiz-Grossman's debut novel follows characters as their lives collide amidst devastation and heartbreak. Well-off grant writer Abigail is about to turn 50, living in Berkeley with her wife, Taylor, and teenage son, Xavier. When one of her projects fails to gain funding, Abigail plans a fundraiser birthday party to make up the gap. In another part of the city, Sunny and Willow live in a van as they cling to the hope that their low-income housing application will be approved while Willow copes with past trauma. Xavier, meanwhile, navigates the challenges of senior year along with a deepening connection to transfer student Mar. When a fast-moving wildfire tears through Berkeley during Abigail's event, the diverse characters are directly in its path, and all are left struggling to forge ahead in the complex aftermath. For Abigail and Taylor, it's confronting their crumbling relationship, for Xavier, it's coming into his own, propelled after an encounter with Sunny. As the characters' paths twine with fervor, Ruiz-Grossman's engaging tale offers a vivid exploration of modern-day disparities within the timeless and universal search for belonging and self-determination.--Leah Strauss
YA: YAs will connect with teen Xavier's struggles to reconcile his parents' wishes and his own ambitions. LS.
YA Recommendations
Adult titles recommended for teens are marked with the following symbols: YA, for books of general YA interest; YA/C, for books with particular curricular value; and YA/S, for books that will appeal most to teens with a special interest in a specific subject.
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Strauss, Leah. "A Fire So Wild." Booklist, vol. 120, no. 9-10, 1 Jan. 2024, p. 23. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A780973321/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=36e72e65. Accessed 4 Apr. 2024.