Fire Season (ePub)

The propulsive story of three scheming opportunists-a banker, a conman, and a woman with an extraordinary gift-whose lives collide in the wake of a devastating fire in the American West

For the citizens of Spokane Falls, the fire of 1889 that destroyed their frontier boomtown was no disaster; it was an opportunity. Barton Heydale, manager of the only bank in Spokane Falls, is out of step with the times. The people of Spokane Falls respect outlaws, not bureaucrats, and after six lonely years in Washington Territory, he wonders if it isn't time to end his short life. Until, that is, he sees an ember shimmering on the horizon, headed his way. The fire destroys Spokane Falls, but it gives Barton a reason to live. As citizens flock to the bank to cash out insurance policies and take out loans, it dawns on him that there is a way to command the power he craves-and it's not by following the rules.

When Quake Auchenbaucher, a career conman hired to investigate the cause of the fire, arrives in Spokane Falls, he employs his usual shady tactics. But this time, with Washington Territory vying for admission to the union, the sudden attention to due process jeopardizes Quake's methods of manipulation.

And then there's Roslyn Beck, whose uncanny ability to see the future has long driven her to drink, and with whom both Barton and Quake have fallen madly and dangerously in love. She is known as a "certain kind of woman," and she possesses the power to change the world, for better or worse. As their paths collide, diverge, and collide again, Barton, Quake, and Roslyn come to terms with their own needs for power, greed, and control, leading one to total ruin, one to heartbreak, and one, ultimately, to redemption.

With masterful precision, devious originality, and dark whimsy, Fire Season freshly imagines the greed, misrule, and misogyny of the American West to tell a rollicking, bewitching story about how to find order in lawlessness, retribution in toxic masculinity, and purpose in the face of injustice.