Since New Hampshire had experienced only a few cases of dragonscale, schools were still open. Our principal character, school nurse Harper Grayson was in her office treating a child with a black eye. As she looked out the window, she saw a man staggering around the playground. He appeared to be drunk, but then she saw a fine white smoke coming out his sleeves. “The man who walked like a drunk began to sag. Then he arched his spine convulsively, throwing his head back, and flames licked up the front of his shirt. She had one brief glance at his gaunt, agonized face and then his head was a torch...school was suspended statewide that evening, with the assurances they would reopen when the crisis passed. As it happened, it never passed.” Is that an ominous start or what? The one distinct attribute of Joe Hill’s storytelling is his ability to grab your attention and hold on to it. It really is a hard novel to put down. Meanwhile, The NBA (National Basketball Association) cancels its season. “Come summer, most of the (Boston) Celtics would be dead by incineration or suicide.” Who is to blame? FOX News blamed ISIS; MSNBC blamed engineers at Halliburton (an oilfield service company); CNN blamed both. Then the unthinkable happened, “Glenn Beck burned to death on his internet program, right in front of his chalkboard, burned so hot his glasses fused to his face…” Harper goes home to her husband, Jakob. He forces her to agree to a suicide pact if they develop dragonscale. Can you believe all this happened during the first thirteen pages and the prologue? And you thought that I was giving the story away. That’s total flapdoodle!
So Nurse Harper volunteers her services at the local hospital. She is always in a full body rubber suit when handling dragonscale patients, dead or alive. One day a fireman (at least he is dressed as such) rushes into the emergency room carrying a sick boy. He demands immediate service even though he went in front of a line of dragonscale patients a block long. He says the boy has a stomach problem. The fireman doesn’t get to the end of the line when told so. Security is called and wrestle him to the ground. Before the fireman can cause a problem, Nurse Harper convinces the hospital to admit the boy because she says that he has an appendix emergency. The boy stayed three days in his room on the third floor and suddenly disappeared. How did he get out? Did the fireman use a ladder to reach the boy’s room? You just met main characters two and three: John, the fireman and the deaf boy, Nick. The first-floor cafeteria was converted into a dormitory for the healthiest of the dragonscale patients. The smolders were kept somewhere else. “Smolders smoked on and off, always ready to ignite. Smoke curled from their hair, from their nostrils, and their eyes streamed with water. The stripes on their bodies got so hot they could melt latex gloves.”(okay, I’m on page 27 of 747 pages). Later on the First-floor dormitory, we meet main character four, a lovely black patient named, Renee Gilmonton. “In a former life, she had been a professional do-gooder: organized a weekly pancake breakfast for a local orphanage, taught English to felons in the state prison and managed an independent bookstore that lost money…” She becomes friends with Nurse Harper.
One day Renee started to glow (lit up like a Christmas tree). She runs out of the hospital expecting to ignite. She wasn’t found. Later that day, the cafeteria dormitory patients ignited one after another. The hospital burns to the ground spewing ash high into the air. Harper got out in time but was showered by the ash. Her husband Jakob takes her home, washes her and then makes love to her. “A baby begins.” In the ensuing days Harper, in the shower, notices spots on her leg, “A dark, almost inky line, dusted with a few oddly mineral flecks of gold." Jakob is furious at her. Why did she have to play Florence Nightingale? Has she infected him? He leaves her for eight weeks (the incubation period) vowing that if he contracts dragonscale, he will demand her to endure the promised double suicide. While Jakob was gone, Harper finds out that, “She was pregnant and crawling with a flammable fungus.” Jakob calls and ask her if she is watching FOX TV…”She stared at the TV, jittery footage of a meadow somewhere. A few men in yellow slickers and elbow-high rubber gloves and gas masks, carrying Bushmaster assault rifles, were on the far side of the field...they were bringing people out of the woods. Kids, mostly, although there were some women with them...the first gun might’ve gone off by accident...the other guns went off, all together, firecrackers on a July night.” Then, “The newscaster was saying...illustrates the dangers of people who have been infected and who don’t seek…” I’m only on page 69, can you imagine what the next 678 pages holds for you?
Actor George Clooney was dead. He burned to death while on a humanitarian aid mission to NYC. Jakob calls Harper and tells her he has a mark on his foot, but he sandpapered it off. Jakob comes home and kicks the door open. He has a gun and tries to kill her. Harper looks at him and tells him that he doesn’t have dragonscale, but he doesn’t believe Harper’s diagnosis. Harper jumps out the window and breaks her ankle. She limps into the woods with Jakob following. The fireman is in the woods and gets the pregnant Harper into a tree house. Jakob fights the fireman and is winning until the fireman takes his glove off and ignites the hand that is wrapped around Jakob’s throat. Jakob runs away screaming (we haven’t heard the last of him). The fireman, also suffering from dragonscale, has somehow learned how to control the fire within him! Alright, I assume I've whetted your appetite and you want to finish the next 600 pages of this incredible novel. The rest of this story has more twists than Chubby Checker has. Yes, this review was long, but I didn’t even touch on the meat of this novel. Did I tell you about the fifth main character? No. Did I tell you the fireman has a British accent? Did I tell you about Bad Harold? No. Did I tell you about the pernicious Marlboro Man? No. The secret summer camp? Or Martha Quinn Island? NO & NO. You must read this novel...or you will come down with dragonscale.
RATING: 5 out of 5 stars
Comment: In Joe Hill’s acknowledgments section, he says,”My screen agent, Sean Daily, and his wife, Sarah, offered support and good advice, and then Sean turned around and sold the film rights to 21st Century Fox and Temple Hill.” This will be an amazing movie.
Hill’s agent and friend, Mickey Choate, died of lung cancer recently (he was 53, never smoked and ran every day). So much for following good health guidelines. Joe said, “Mickey represented me for almost a decade before I told him Hill wasn’t really my last name.” Not for nothing couldn’t Mickey see the resemblance to Stephen King?
It took three drafts and four years to complete The Fireman. Joe Hill also wrote New York Times bestsellers NOS4A2, Horns, Heart-Shaped Box and graphic novel, Locke & Key, Volumes 1-6.
Who does Joe Hill look like?
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