An Early History of Fire

Longing and confusion. Hearts pounding, time ticking away. Early 1960s in a Midwestern town. Danny Mueller's working class life is one of fierce loyalty to childhood friends, Jake and Terry. But the bigger world is stirring once he meets Karen, back from college in the east and alluring because of what she knows, and unsettling for that same reason. The grip of Danny's past is intensified by his father, a German immigrant mourning a vanished world of lost prestige. For Pop the question is how to let go of a son and life he never quite had now that the future has shrunk to almost nothing. While Danny hopes to change without betraying the bonds that have sustained him, Karen, a whirl of brilliance, looks to J. D. Salinger for answers and to Danny for a simplicity he does not possess. To fall in love, to have a destiny, to know what it is. That's what they all want, even Benji hanging onto Pop, and Shirley, too, adrift in a way she could not have foreseen. old look backward and the young look ahead, while we watch from the future they long to inhabit. And it's all about to burn in the heat of whatever's coming. The way it always does.