Woodsburner

By John Pipkin

Subjects: Forest fires, Massachusetts, fiction, Fiction, Fiction, biographical

Description: On April 30, 1844, a year before he built his cabin on Walden Pond, Henry David Thoreau accidentally started a forest fire that destroyed three hundred acres of the Concord woods--an event that altered the landscape of American thought in a single day. Against the backdrop of Thoreau's fire, Pipkin's ambitious debut penetrates the mind of the young philosopher while painting a panorama of the young nation at a formative moment.