Reviews of Setting Fires

 

CLEVELAND JEWISH NEWS, December 8, 2000

 Setting Fires offers warmth, sheds light

By Susan H.Kahn Assistant Editor

Kate Wenner's first novel about the healing power of facing the truth burns with intensity.

     Fire is terrifying in its destructive power, but it also has the ability to purify and temper. Two fires, a generation apart, set the framework for Kate Wenner's beautifully rendered first novel, Setting Fires, about owning up to the truth. The fires are actual events but they also work symbolically as the characters, emotionally seared, are able to rise Phoenix-like from the ashes.

     The novel begins with a pair of phone calls that shatter Annie Fishman Waldmas' contented life. The first informs the 40-year-old documentary filmmaker, wife and mother that her family's country house in Connecticut is on fire. She and her husband, a photo editor, drive up from to New York to assess the damage, which is considerable. They are assured by the local fire inspector that the cause was faulty wiring. But the couple finds it difficult to shake their suspicions that the blaze, the third in the area to hit a Jewish-owned property, has been deliberately set.

     Less than two weeks later, Annie receives even more distressing news. Her beloved father has been diagnosed with a potentially serious illness. As his condition worsens she, a non-practicing Jew, finds herself seeking solace at a synagogue in her Upper West Side neighborhood where the perceptive rabbi draws her out. He wisely advises her to spend as much time as possible with her dying father and emphasizes the importance of coming to terms with life at the end, of forgiving and being forgiven.

     As she spends weeks caring for him in his West Coast home, Annie encourages her father to tell his life story on videotape. Surprisingly, this tough, somewhat distant man welcomes the task and approaches it with candor. For the first time, he tells her about a fire from his childhood, one that has haunted him all his life, the shame causing him to create for himself a "manufactured" personality.

     Her father's revelations plus the arrival of several anonymous letters spur Annie to probe more deeply into the cause of her fire. Her tenacious investigation eventually leads her to a shocking truth.

     In Setting Fires, Wenner has written a book that works wonderfully well on many levels. Emotionally satisfying as it explores the big themes of what it means to live and to die well, it also offers the delight of a well-paced mystery. The characters are familiar and endearing and the dialogue has the ring of truth.

     Although Setting Fires is fictional, there are many parallels to Wenner's life. Like her protagonist, her country house was torched, and she learned about her father's fire while caring for him during his final illness in 1988. Wenner was a also a non-observant Jew who found her way back to religion while trying to cope with her father's death.

     "I learned an important lesson during the time I spent with my father when he was dying," says Wenner in a phone interview. "I learned how a buried secret can distort a personality and corrupt a life. I thought if I could write these events as fiction, I would get at a deeper truth."

     As her own father was dying, Wenner, a former producer at ABC's "20/20," videotaped conversations with him which she has turned into a short documentary film called "A Time With My Father. She shows the film as part of her book tour. Wenner also encourages other people to take the time now to get their parents' stories on videotape.

     "If you are attentive and give them time, people really open up," she says. "Ask them what you really want to know, those are the things they really want and need to talk about."

     Married to an artist and the mother of two teenagers, Wenner belongs to B'nai Jeshurun on New York's Upper West Side. She says she practices "contemplative Judaism" and, like her protagonist, has found that her religion offers "extraordinary ritual" to deal with death and mourning.
   

US Weekly Magazine, September 25, 2000

Three stars:  Humane page-turner about hate crimes and family reconciliation.

“Journalist and first-time novelist Kate Wenner brings her reportorial skills to this engaging examination of anti-Semitism and familial healing.  Annie Fishman Waldmas is a 40-year-old documentary filmmaker contending with her estranged father’s cancer and a mysterious blaze that destroys her family’s country home.  When two local Jewish-owned buildings also burn now, Annie decides to investigate.  She learns a hard lesson in forgiveness and the nature of evil when her dying father confesses to his own childhood history of arson.  Before speaking with an FBI agent, Annie explains,  ‘I had to make it clear that there were good guys and bad guys, that there was a story that would hold an audience’s attention to the end.’  Fires follows suit, giving an important subject an entertaining, old-fashioned Hollywood spin.” 

 

Jewish Week, August 25, 2000 / 24 Av 5760

The Fires This Time

    Kate Wenner's first novel touches on teshuvah and the burning desire to get at the truth about family.

        If a book that confronts death head-on can be uplifting, Kate Wenner has done it, in an auspicious first novel, Setting Fires (Scribner). The two fires referred to in the title offer unseen sparks, that, amid the danger of consuming flames, light the way to meaning for the main character and her dying father.

    The book makes for great reading as these late August days have that hint of the holidays approaching. Wenner's presentation of the theme of teshuvah - and its impact on her characters' lives - will touch readers as they begin their own process of returning and forgiving.

     Annie Fishman Waldmas, a documentary filmmaker who lives on the Upper West Side, receives two devastating phone calls: One message is that her country house is on fire, and soon after, she learns that her father is potentially very ill. As she and her husband, a photo editor, hear more about the fire, their suspicions are raised that it was anti-Semitic arson, possibly tied to several other fires in the area in Jewish-owned buildings.

      At the same time, the news about her father grows worse, and although their relationship has been rocky at times, she is drawn closely into his circle of care. At the advice of a rabbi she seeks out, Annie, who'd never before been involved in Jewish life, tries to spend as much time as possible with her father. Rabbi Lowenstein emphasizes the importance of coming to terms with one's life at the end, of seeing life as a gift, of forgiving and feeling forgiven. With Annie's encouragement, her very successful but distant father begins to talk about his life - his "manufactured" personality - with a certain candor and self-awareness. He tells her for the first time about a fire in his childhood, one that has haunted him for more than 50 years. As Annie seeks the truth about her fire, the truth about her father's fire shocks her, and gives her new insight into her father's life and her own.

        This is a story of rebuilding family, of returning to Judaism; Wenner, an award-winning television producer who worked at ABC's "20-20" for 14 years, also deals with social issues like anti-Semitism as she tells the day-to-day story of her characters' multi-layered lives. There's also a veil of mystery as Annie, and later the FBI, investigates the fire. Wenner is a skilled writer, and pulls all these elements together well.

      Although Setting Fires is fictional, there are many parallels to the author's life. Her father died in 1988 and before his death, she grew close to him and learned of a fire that brought him much shame, and also of a real fire in her country home. "These were such transformative experiences for me that I really was compelled to write about them," Wenner says in an interview with The Jewish Week near her Upper West Side home, explaining why she wrote this as a novel rather than a memoir. "My father's dying was a teaching for me in the power of truth, and that may be why I wanted to write the heart of it as truthfully as I could, while setting the story itself, and the characters who told it, in a fictional world."

        As her own father was dying, Wenner videotaped her conversations with him, and has just completed a short documentary film called Time With My Father, which she'll show as part of her book tour this fall, and at Jewish film festivals later on. In the film, Wenner's father tells the story of his fire. He also says good-bye, expressing great love for his family and the knowledge that in the end he was loved. "I couldn't go out in a better way," he says. "The time has come." His daughter comments, "He fought his way out of his past to provide for our future."

        In videotaping her father, Wenner applied what she had learned as a television producer, to try to create an environment of trust so that people could find the courage to talk about themselves. She urges people to take the time now to get their parents' stories onto videotapes. The keys to doing this, she says, are asking simple questions and "listening well, with real generosity." And she encourages people not to hold back from asking about the things they really want to know - for those are the things that people really want to talk about.

        Around the time of her father's death, Wenner reconnected with Judaism. About teshuvah, she says she has learned that "a real turning can happen even at the last minute. Dying can bring life into sharp focus and be an opportunity for healing that not only helps the dying person face death, but also frees the next generation, and generations to come."

        "I think that the notion of teshuvah is one of the most extraordinary gifts, to find ways to have a new beginning, to have the community's support in that once a year."

Publishers Weekly,  August 14, 2000

      Documentary filmmaker, happily married wife and mother of two, Annie Waldmas, at 40, is enjoying a successful career and stable domestic environment when, in a short span of time, two disasters strike.  The Waldmas’s second home in secluded Brookfield, Conn., is where Annie, news photographer husband Josh, and young children Eli and Hannah escape New York City’s hectic pace, until their retreat is destroyed in a fire that may have been set by anti-Semitic arsonists.  Then, Annie’s beloved father, Abrahman Fishman, 70, is diagnosed with a rapidly progressing form of cancer. In this intelligent, richly nuanced debut from a former producer of ABC’s 20/20, Annie, who’s never been religious, turns to a local rabbi for support as she tends to her dying parent, supervises the rebuilding of her country home and investigates the cause of the fire,  Though the local police are satisfied that the blaze was due to faulty electrical wiring, Annie receives anonymous letters telling her that two other Jewish owned homes in the area went up in flames.  Aware that her father has only a few months to live, Annie videotapes him talking about his life and how he came to be dubbed “Manufactured Man,” a self-created person in every sense.  Abe tells Annie of his  “Mean, suffocating” mother, who, five decades earlier, set her own dry-goods store ablaze, then went on to burn down two additional businesses, imperiling several lives.  Having unburdened himself of this shameful memory, Abe dies in peace, but Annie is anguished, and also alarmed enough to call the FBI when her research turns up a total of 12 fires set on Jewish property.

Understated yet intense and touching, this is a sophisticated account of one woman’s perseverance in learning that even a happy family can have dark secrets, and that facing them honestly can give her the strength to become a force for change.

Editorial Reviews

From Beliefnet

               Thankfully, the main story has enough life to keep bobbing to the surface and making waves. Hate and love, sin and redemption, after all, are eternal and powerful forces, and Wenner depicts their      pull and push amid the mundane details of daily life. Waldmas investigates alleged anti-Semitism in the hills of New England, but first she has to find the baby-sitter. She and hubby want to collect on their fire insurance and rebuild their dream house, but first they have to carp at one another over the chores. (Beliefnet, Aug. 2000)

Customer Reviews from Amazon.com:

Burning Bright,
September 20, 2000
Reviewer: A reader from New York City

                 This is a compelling book from the opening sentence: 'Two fires taught me lessons about my life, two fires separated by nearly six decades.' From beginning to end, the story of the Waldemas family sparks thought and inspires the imagination. Vivid characters-- Annie, her father Abe, her children and siblings-- people a narrative laced with ideas. This is a book about real, engaging   people, to be sure, but it is also a meditation on family bonds and family secrets, the impact of anti-Semitism and the search for modern Jewish identity, not to mention reconciliation to the death of a loved parent. This is a novel worth reading. It provokes and it satisfies.

                  ***

Many layers to Setting Fires,
September 9, 2000
Reviewer: Linda G Pizzica from Lake Mary, Florida United States

               Kate Wenner has written a book with many layers. Family tragedies and travails intertwine with religion, ethics and morality, justice, perserverance, and relationships. The gripping story hooks    you in while she loads you with her own family history, lessons learned in life, how to deal with tragedy. Her story is so very believable and so easy to identify with. It was a book I could not put
down, each chapter coaxing me to the next. It is also a book that, like fine food or wine, one does not forget the taste of. It is memorable and inspiring.

***

Deep, moving, and gripping: what more can you ask for?
September 7, 2000
Reviewer: A reader from Bronx, NY USA

                 Kate Wenner's "Setting Fires" is one of the best books I've read in years. Compulsively readable, it is also a deeply moving story of a relationship between a father and daughter (which encouraged me to reconnect with my own elderly father); between a husband and wife; between a mother and her children; between a sister and her siblings; and between a human being and her spirit. This is a story of real relationships; real pain; real depth--both spiritual and emotional; and even real suspense. A magnificent accomplishment.

                    ***

A gripping story, great page-turner, full of life and depth,
August 30, 2000
Reviewer: Edward Hallowell, M.D. from Arlington, Massachusetts

                 This is a wonderful novel, made amazing by the fact that it is the author's first novel. That fact is hard to believe, as it is wirtten with the confidence and skill of a seasoned pro. What I especially     love about this book is the combination of a great plot with a really uplifiting theme. You feel stronger and better as a human being after you finish this book than you did before you started it. I can't say that about many modern novels, but I can sure say it about this one. This would be a perfect book for book groups to pick up and use as one of their selections. I hope it will gather the wide, wide audience it deserves. Read this book. I promise you, you will be glad you did.

***
  

Kate Wenner has written a beautiful book!
August 30, 2000
Reviewer: A reader from Massachusetts

                 Annie Waldmas balances the needs of two children, a husband, a career and a dying father as she struggles with the shame of deception, a passion for the truth and the meaning of family. Setting Fires beautifully draws you into the life of a very real family, then sends you off on their journey like a thriller.

***
 

A Terrific Read,
August 25, 2000
Reviewer: A reader from Larkspur CA

               I read this book the way one eats an exquisite meal at a fine restaurant, in courses, sitting back in between each one to enjoy the fine delivery of information, the detail, pace and meaning. It is a         great story.
                Setting Fires is provocative of deep thought andiscussion and would be a good candidate for book club pleasure and scrutiny.
                 Participating with one's parent in the chapters of dying is a near-to-hand prospect for our bulging generation. Wenner has provided us with a moving map of the territory.
                I recommend this book highly: good writing, easy to get into, and fascinatin

***

 From Library Journal:

               Filmmaker Annie Waldmas has an idyllic life that includes husband Josh and two children, a sophisticated New York daily life, and a country house in Connecticut. But her sense of happiness and
security is shattered when a fire guts the country home, and she has a nagging suspicion that it is arson.
               Despite assurances from local fire officials that the fire was accidental, Annie persists in investigating, especially after she discovers that a series of fires in nearby towns all affected Jewish homes or businesses. In a parallel story, Annie attends her prickly father in his final illness and learns that arson played a part in his past. Both events force her to examine her sense of self and her life as a secular Jew. While her story is involving and her crises significant, Annie comes across as enormously self-involved, neglecting her family and indulging in long bouts of self-pity that make her somewhat unlikable. Nevertheless, this is an interesting debut.  

--Ann Fisher, Radford P.L., VA Copyright 2000
Cahners Business Information.

***
   

               

            Barnes and Noble CUSTOMER REVIEW

 Burning Issues
A reviewer, September 19, 2000,

               This is a compelling book from the opening sentence: 'Two fires taught me lessons about my life, two fires separated by nearly six decades.' From beginning to end, the story of the Waldemas family sparks thought and inspires the imagination. Vivid characters-- Annie, her father Abe, her children and siblings-- people a narrative laced with ideas. This is a book about real, engaging people, to be sure, but it is also a meditation on family bonds and family secrets, the impact of anti-Semitism and the search for modern Jewish identity, and the uneasy reconciliation to the death of a loved parent. This is a novel worth reading. It provokes and it satisfies.
 

  "In this rich and riveting novel, Kate Wenner deftly weaves together themes of family and tradition, longing and fear, spiritual yearning and ancestral memory. I became totally caught up in the lives of these very real characters whose struggles and triumphs of heart and mind have remained with me long after the novel's end." --Katherine Kurs, author of SEARCHING FOR YOUR SOUL

        Kate Wenner spins a deeply felt and emotional father-daughter story about a woman's attempt to come to terms with the past and present, life and death, good and evil." --Delia Ephron, author of HANGING UP, screenwriter, producer

        "The passion for truth which inspired Kate Wenner's career as an investigative journalist drives SETTING FIRES, her first work of fiction, to its harrowing conclusion. As well paced as any thriller, SETTING FIRES is marked by Wenner's ability to dramatize moral issues: the ravages of hatred; the cost of deception; the meaning of family. An impressive debut, forecasting future work of equal distinction." --Ann Arensberg, author of INCUBUS and SISTER WOLF

        "In this engaging first novel by a veteran television journalist comfortable with controversy, Kate Wenner tackles a provocative subject and the feelings it arouses with delicacy and passion." --Judith Thurman, author of SECRETS OF THE FLESH: A Life of Colette

"Setting Fires sparks real interest in the plot and in the wonderful characters. The conclusion is both dramatic and subtle - a real teaching about healing, dying, and returning." -- Rabbi Rachel Cowan

Kirkus Reviews,  June 15, 2000

        A middle-aged woman explores the origins of a fire that guts the family’s weekend home – and comes to grips with the death of her father.

         Annie Waldmas seems to have everything.  A 40-year old documentary filmmaker, she’s married to a photo researcher for the New York Times, has two smart, adorable children, lives on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, and has enough disposable income to afford a summer home in Connecticut.

        But when Wenner’s story opens, the family’s summer place has just gone up in smoke, the results of what the authorities call an electrical fire.  To make matters worse, Annie’s controlling father, who lives on the West Coast, has just been diagnosed with stomach cancer.  Annie has had her ups and downs with her father, as have her two brothers and sister, but love now wins out, and she finds herself shuttling back and forth across the continent first to bond, then to care for her dying father.  Meanwhile, she suspects that the fire could have been arson, possibly set by an anti-Semite who may be burning a swath through other nearby New England towns.  But the real fires in the well-told family saga are not those that destroy wood, brick and mortar, but those that rage in the heart and minds of a woman struggling to make sense of a world where loss seems arbitrary and capricious.  At times, the account of Annie’s father’s embrace of his imminent death – and her attempt to accept his loss – threatens to overcome the somewhat less interesting matter of solving a possible hate crime, but Wenner, a former 20/20 TV journalist, manages to keep things on track.

      Wenner is a skilled writer who weaves an entertaining debut tale while offering a truthful and touching portrait of a family held together – and torn apart – by guilt and lies.”
 
 
 

 

LIFE STORIES--
How to talk with an aging parent about the past
and try to draw closer now
by Suzanne Curley

      NO MATTER how humble the circumstances, each of our parents has led a richly detailed life, full of successes and disappointments, trauma and triumph, drab spells and periods of intense color. Sadly, though, few of us think to ask our parents and relatives about their life histories while we have the chance: And when they are gone, there are unsolved mysteries, unanswered questions and, of course, plenty of regrets.

        Journalist and former ABC-TV producer Kate Wenner is one person who decided to pursue the story of her father's past before it was too late. Shortly after he was diagnosed with stomach cancer, she began asking him questions about his life. She videotaped their talks so her children would have a visual record of their grandfather, how he looked and talked, his voice and gestures; they'd have a good chance of understanding the lessons he'd learned from his life. For her, she says, it was a great way to spend time with her father, and become closer.

         Wenner's newly published first novel, Setting Fires (Scribner, $24), grew out of this period, she says. In it, a middle-aged woman draws nearer to her ailing parent by recording his memories, even as the two prepare for death's approach. The experience of hearing her father confront the traumatic events of his past, says Wenner, inspires the daughter to face the difficult truths of her own life.

        Like her fictional heroine, Wenner, married with two children, divides her time between a Manhattan apartment and a rural Connecticut retreat. And, as did the parent in the book, her own father - who died in 1988 - was willing to tell and retell his life story, eventually revealing a secret he'd carried with him all his adult life. Letting go of that secret, Wenner believes, allowed her father to die in peace.

      "They were truly wonderful conversations, full of love, history, insight, amazing closeness between us, sometimes sad, but never at all depressing," says Wenner. Out of them, she's made a short documentary film, Time With My Father, which will show at Jewish book fairs and elsewhere, and she's creating a Web site (www.interviewing parents.com) to help others feel comfortable with the idea.

        Wenner strongly advocates making the attempt: "There's so much to learn about your parents, and about yourself in the process. My dad died when my children were toddlers. Now they are teenagers, and their memories of him have faded, but when they sit and watch the tapes with me, they know him and can actually continue to learn from him. The films have become a family treasure for me, for them and possibly for their children as well."

      "The trick is getting over your own fear of their dying," says Wenner. "Don't think of doing this because you are afraid they are going to die, do it because their story can help you understand your own life better."

  Home
Top of the page

Next: About the author

Read the first chapter

Discussion guide for book groups

Articles by Kate Wenner

What is SettingFires about

Why I wrote Setting Fires

E-mail the author

Order

Setting Fires by Kate Wenner ISBN: 068483748X

Order Setting Fires from:

©August 2000, Kate Wenner
Web design by Mimsweb