A debut novel by Elizabeth Sanders
 
Christmas Eve in Vacherie, Louisiana, finds the banks of the Mississippi alive with fire. Walter Doucet's holiday season is consumed with planning the perfect bonfire -- the one that will finally beat his brother's blaze and extinguish the lingering melancholy from his father's death. As Walter obsesses over wood, kindling and structure, his family life teeters on the brink of collapse.
 
Elizabeth Sanders has an MFA from The New School. Her short fiction has appeared in the Arkansas Review, the International Feminist Journal of Politics, and Portal Press' anthology Something in the Water. She is from New Orleans and lives in New York City with her husband and daughter.