Would you return to the landscape you watched burn as a child, especially if you and everyone else believed that the manic, wind-fuelled, merciless fire was your fault?

Set in a fictional version of the real Main-à-Dieu, Nova Scotia where a 1976 wildfire caused catastrophic devastation, Fire Monster tells the tale of a skilled oil sands worker who returns to the Cape Breton fishing village where, as a child, he was blamed for causing the fire that tore through the local community, consuming bush, trees, houses, boats, cars, animals and the century-old gothic church. At once a poetry collection, a story inspired by true events, and a visually stunning comic-book adventure, Fire Monster is a mixed genre story for the ages that explores the aftermath of tragedy, the frayed bonds of friendship and family, and love’s redemptive power.

My father grew up in Main-à-Dieu. Like so many young Cape Bretoners of his generation—and those before and since—he moved away to seek his fortune. I was four years old, growing up in southern Ontario, when the home Dad helped his family build—and where my Nanny and Grampy and two uncles and an aunt still lived—burned down. I vividly remember that charred East Coast world, and grew up amid an evolving whirl of fire stories and memories, some bitter, some outrageous, some mysterious, some sad. The poems that form the backbone of Fire Monster grew out of those memories. (They also live on the page all by themselves, as pure text, in my new poetry collection, While Supplies Last.) The poems in turn fed this fictional comic-book tale—and the gorgeous, terrifying Fire Monster herself—thanks to my brave, bold, foolhardy friend, artist Pauline Conley, who leapt with me headlong into those old flames.

Order from All Lit Up, your local bookstore or purchase from the publisher below.