Deep Fire Rise

Advance praise for Deep Fire Rise:

"The greatest geological event of our times finally has the novel it deserves. While the literature of Mt. St. Helens is rich in documentation and description, Deep Fire Rise is the first fiction of note to come out of that earth-shattering eruption. And fine fiction it is, melding Jon Gosch's taut, fresh style with an unforgettable cast and a riveting plot that gathers with all the tension and inexorability of the very eruption itself." --Robert Michael Pyle, 2x Washington State Book Award winner and author of Wintergreen and Where Bigfoot Walks


"Deep Fire Rise is a murder mystery, a character study, and a depiction of place that builds in tension like a swelling volcano. Having covered the eruption of Mount St. Helens as a journalist and ridden with Clark County deputies, I can testify just how impressively Jon Gosch has captured that time and culture." --William Dietrich, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and NY Times bestselling author of the Ethan Gage adventure series


"Jon Gosch's Deep Fire Rise rings with authenticity. The intimate, complicated, and downright strange relationships amongst the people in these small towns are pitch perfect, as is the music of the dialogue and rhythms of the prose." --Bruce Holbert, 2015 Washington State Book Award Winner of The Hour of Lead


"A bright young talent is on display in this vivid, avant-garde take on our local lore." --Michael Gurian, NY Times bestselling author of The Wonder of Boys


"Deep Fire Rise perfectly captures the world of Mount St. Helens at its most terrifying moment. A magnificent read." --Terry Trueman, Printz Honor Author of Stuck in Neutral




From the back cover:

It is 1980 and Deputy Wilson has been banished to a backwoods district in the shadow of Mount St. Helens. His duty is to protect a humble rural populace from the miscreants and misfits who lurk at this fringe of society - an all-too-human cast of white supremacists, PCP brewers, Sasquatch hunters, and hermetic schizophrenics.

That spring the volcano awakens from its long dormancy. Earthquakes rock the locals in their beds. Plumes of ash blot out the sun. Amidst the rising threat of eruption, a horrific act of bloodshed will propel Deputy Wilson to the very flanks of the smoking volcano on a mission that blurs the line between justice and vengeance.

A genre-defying blend of mystery and history, Deep Fire Rise is also an homage to the everyday heroism of a profession so often maligned in America today. Dark yet tender, comedic yet sincere, this carefully crafted novel builds into a climax as shocking and unforgettable as the events of May 18, 1980.



Brief passage from the novel:

"They had finally begun to run for the truck when a hot black raging smog swept them up like puny ragdolls and body-slammed them into the road. Wilson hit chest-first with such an impact that his lungs caved. The cracks he heard seemed to be his ribs, but were in fact the firs crashing around him. He was gasping for oxygen when a tree fell upon his legs to vise him to the hostile earth. Next a scalding brew of mud and ash began to cover him and boil his flesh. He felt his ears stiffen and curl. So hot was the slurry that he could only imagine it was lava. Choking and burning and pinned to the ground, Wilson waited for his life to