The early American tree-hugger and pioneering thinker Henry David Thoreau did a bad, bad thing back on April 30, 1844.A year before he settled into the “simple life” at Walden Pond, he struck a match to start a cooking fire in the dry woods around Concord, Massachusetts and accidentally ignited a forest fire that consumed 300 acres.

The events of that chaotic day appear to have altered the course of Thoreau’s life and American history.More recently, this historical footnote sparked the creation of Woodsburner, a terrific debut novel from John Pipkin.Woodsburner offers a nuanced portrait of a young and less recognizable Thoreau, whose philosophy begins to materialize as the flames lay waste.

The talented Pipkin simultaneously presents a vivid picture of mid-19th century New England on the cusp of unstoppable change through a cast of characters: a sadistic and misguided preacher, a desperate bookseller, and an isolated immigrant laborer harboring painful secrets.Their lives are forever changed by the fire which serves as a powerful metaphor for the destructive passions that consume us, as well as the eternal struggles between human society and the natural world.