He Comes in Fire (Book acquired, sometime in early September, 2016)

Aaron R. Even’s novel He Comes in Fire is new from Atticus Books. Their blurb:

In the late 1990s a rash of mysterious arsons swept the Southern United States. For some months the fires (many striking African-American churches in rural communities) made the national news, raising fears of a racist criminal conspiracy. Then slowly they faded from the public eye, with no clear pattern, motive, or responsible group ever detected.

He Comes In Fire is a fictional, investigative composite of a country in flames, a dark and fast-paced crime drama that explores how the search for comprehensible answers and meaning can lead a people astray—into false assumptions, accusations, and terrible miscarriages of justice.

The setting is a semi-fictitious county (Zion) in central Virginia, a stark and fallen world of preachers, felons, and lost souls whose voices God no longer hears. When a misunderstood drifter (Lucas Sneed) tangles with a preacher struggling to lead a moral life (Jack Dixon), the two men collide in an unforgiving place teeming with sin, selfishness, and violence.