Burn: A novel

“Heller’s Burn is unforgettable in its tenderness, its power, and its warning. Prepare for a shattered heart and a shaken confidence in where this nation might go next.”

Who hasn’t joked that some part of America might secede under today’s political stresses? And how often do political speeches remind us of the sharp divisions in opinion and regional history, affecting what people believe? It’s not unusual to hear the possibility of another Civil War for this nation.

Perhaps only Peter Heller, with his honed gift for slow revelation through backwoods investigation, would place the location for secession in the wildlands of New England’s paradise of hunting, fishing, and tourism: northern Maine.

As Burn opens, lifelong friends Jess and Storey continue their men-only tradition of annual camping, hunting, and hiking, this time in the sparsely inhabited interior of the state, where road locations reflect past activity of timber companies, and small towns become isolated, even when they depend on rural tourism for part of their income. “They had come to the lake and the village that afternoon. They were on foot and it was the first real town they’d seen. Like the general store at Four Corners and the farm two miles north, it was burned to the ground.” After a look around, Jess comments, “It’s like some war.”

But his buddy Storey, desperate to connect with his wife and children he’d left at home in Vermont, gets to the truth of the matter more quickly. “Jesus, Jess, it is a war. I can’t reach Lena. No reception. None.”

Death surrounds them, and incinerated communities. They quickly discover that if anyone is seen alive—for instance, if someone tries to get a boat moving on one of the big lakes—bombardment and annihilation follow immediately. The two men scramble for provisions and safety, becoming the hunted in an arena they don’t yet comprehend. But it doesn’t take long for them to find out they are at a hot spot of a real war (so close to home!) that involves secession and military forces.

Heller offers slow revelation, embedded in both an intimate friendship and lush language that engages at deep levels. “Is this what shock felt like? Jess didn’t know. He didn’t think so. He could move, reason. His gyroscope was working: he knew where his body was in space and in the landscape. He just didn’t know much else. Like what they were doing here or where they should go. . . . God. Nobody deserved this.”

But the landscape of war brings out the strangeness of this friendship, including a shameful secret that Jess has kept from Storey for decades. Jess’s own recent losses, of both his marriage and his home, seem to stem from an inability to be loyal, to love well. Does that in turn come from what he’s hidden? “He was being stripped, little by little, of all he carried that meant something.  That’s what he thought. His wife had gone, had left him standing in the middle of their street not knowing if he should wave. His dog, and now his first love. . . . And what did it mean if a helicopter or a sniper’s rifle cut him down tomorrow? And could an owl’s call carry the grief, echo it down the freezing valley and soothe the spirit?”

When the two men discover a tiny survivor and attempt to both rescue her and restore her to her family, their new sense of mission propels them into fresh dangers and revelation. Nothing is quite as they believed it was—especially their friendship.

Anyone who’s speculated on a new or continued Civil War must read this. Heller’s Burn is unforgettable in its tenderness, its power, and its warning. Prepare for a shattered heart and a shaken confidence in where this nation might go next.