The Fire Bell Strikes at Midnight is set in California’s Sierra Nevada in the mid-1980s in a fictional Sierra Nevada community on the brink of ecological and economic disaster. The surrounding forests are overgrown and frighteningly dry, the lumber mill is closing down, and real estate speculators are secretly planning upscale developments. 

As fire season looms, the characters cope with poverty, spousal abuse, racism, class bigotry, infidelity, foreclosure, moral dilemmas on the job, corrupt law enforcement, and imminent threats to and from nature. Interspersed episodes set in 1888 reverberate into the present when historical records reveal arson and murder. The inevitable forest fire brings these conflicts to crisis points, and to unusual and uplifting solutions. 

The author is a sixth-generation northern Californian who has lived in Poughkeepsie since 2015. The vivid setting was inspired by the gold rush town where she grew up, and the story was informed by a lifetime of political activism in the San Francisco Bay Area.  She will discuss what went into creating the novel -- imminence of wildfires for most of her life, decades of political activism, extensive research, and constant reading of fiction from an early age – and the path to publication at age 72.  

She encourages attendees to participate in Q&A, and to feel free to ask anything at all. 

Copies of the book will be available for purchase at $12.00, payable by cash or card (ATM or credit card). 

There will also be a display of unusual California flora.