by Joan Brady

In the fall of 2003, after a severe and lengthy drought, as well as a bark beetle infestation that killed thousands of trees in San Diego County, the random path of a lost hunter’s flare actually set off the worst wildfires in California history. With this true-life burning of the Cleveland National Forest as a backdrop, the novel, En Llamas (Flame) takes on a life of its own, throwing two people together—a man and a woman—who might otherwise never have met.

Joan Eagan is thirty-eight-years-old, single, and a top-notch cop with the physical and psychological skills and scars to prove it. On 9/11, she lost both her fiancé and her faith in God to the rubble of the World Trade Center Disaster. One year later, still broken-hearted and plagued with survivor’s guilt, Joan moves to the wide-open spaces of California and takes a position with a small-town police department. She buys a modest house at the foot of an isolated canyon and begins the task of trying to heal her heart in the company of a German shepherd named Greta and two old horses that were included in the price of the house. She also becomes uncharacteristically intrigued with the idea of contacting the dead, and she begins to read about the subject voraciously in the privacy and solitude of her home.

Paul Lutz is in his late forties. He is happily married to his second wife, Annie, and he is the father of two young children. Paul is also a highly successful Hollywood screenwriter with several blockbuster films to his credit. On October 26th, 2003, he sets out to scout locations for the filming of his latest screenplay. Alone in the Cleveland National Forest, Paul finds himself suddenly surrounded by the flames that would eventually become known as the San Diego Firestorm of 2003.

Choking on the smoke and certain that he is about to die, Paul creates a movie in his mind that includes a montage of his favorite family moments spent with Annie and their children. And then he lets go and loses consciousness.

Surprisingly, Paul wakes up to find the fire still raging around him, yet it is easy and painless now for him to breathe. There is a young man with an Hispanic accent giving Paul water and speaking to him in a caring and soothing tone. The man explains that Paul is in “transition”—a stage that exists between life and death—and then points Paul in the direction of Joan Eagan’s house before mysteriously vanishing behind a wall of flames.

Together, Joan Eagan and Paul Lutz spend a few magical hours while the fire rages and threatens to consume them. After each one totally accepts the inevitability of their own mortality, the Hispanic man suddenly re-appears out of the flames, accompanied by Joan Eagan’s deceased fiancé, Daniel. It soon becomes apparent that the Hispanic man is actually God and that he has employed the spirits of Paul and Daniel to help Joan finally heal her broken heart and to understand that there really is no such thing as death.

As a result of this mystical experience, Joan Eagan not only survives the fire, but now she rises like a phoenix to build a beautiful new life upon the ashes of the old one.