A Fire Story (Updated and Expanded Edition)

From celebrated author and illustrator Brian Fies comes the graphic novel A Fire Story, a firsthand account of the Northern California wildfires of 2017—revised and expanded.

“Fies brilliantly enlists the graphic genre to further explore family, community, tradition, home and himself.” —San Francisco Chronicle

Early morning on Monday, October 9, 2017, wildfires burned through Northern California, resulting in 44 fatalities. In addition, 6,200 homes and 8,900 structures were destroyed. Brian Fies’s narrative of this tragic event is an honest, unflinching depiction of his personal experiences, including losing his house and every possession he and his wife had that didn’t fit into the back of their car. In the days that followed, as the fires continued to burn through the area, Fies hastily pulled together A Fire Story and posted it online—it immediately went viral.

He has now expanded his original webcomic to include environmental insight and the fire stories of his neighbors and others in his community. A Fire Story is a candid testimony of the wildfires that left homes destroyed, families broken, and a community determined to rebuild.

This revised and expanded edition includes 32 pages of bonus material, extending the story with updates on rebuilding, wrestling with insurance, wrangling with contractors, the management of sometimes volatile emotions, and the threats of yet another wildfire.