Woodsburner

A Novel Of Henry David Thoreau And His America John Pipkin's first novel "Woodsburner" (2009) is set in Concord, Massachusetts in 1844 and describes an incident in the life of Thoreau (1817 -- 1862). On April 30, 1844, Thoreau and a companion spent a day fishing. When they returned to land to cook th......more

This novel just won the 2009 Mercantile Library/Center for Fiction's Best First Novel Prize! Move Pipkin's Woodsburner to the top of your reading pile! While Woodsburner is a novel about Henry David Thoreau, it manages to exceed or escape all of the ponderous transcendental baggage that could sink a......more

An . . . interesting book, but I can't really recommend it. On a sentence-by-sentence (and sometimes paragraph-by-paragraph) level, it's often excellent. Pipkin is good at describing things (fire, the woods, sometimes people) and actions (a ship exploding, men fighting a forest fire). The writing is......more

On an April day in 1844 Henry David Thoreau and a friend accidentally caused a fire that consumed about 300 acres of timber and threatened the town of Concord. Woodsburner is about that fire and about how it affects the lives of the novel's wonderful ensemble of characters. Because each of those cha......more