The inspiration for the upcoming motion picture of the same name, Fire Creek crackles with emotional and spiritual tension. Spared by a God he didn’t believe in, Jason Chang comes home to Utah carrying shrapnel wounds in his legs and the memory of his best friend dying in combat. Jason’s girlfriend, Alison, and his mother reach for him, but Jason mourns his friend, a husband and father of two girls, and wonders, Why? Across the street, Paul Coldwell is moving into the rundown house he grew up in. He has a son, 13-year-old Lou, a back-breaking job at the Esperanza Copper Mine, and a need for fast money . . . because of a brain tumor that is threatening his life. On the mine property is an old fort, built years ago where a park once stood. Lou Coldwell believes the fort has answers that he needs. But the mine company has fenced off the area and won’t tolerate trespassing. Lou also learns that Jason knows the way to the fort. An improbable friendship develops between the two, and as Jason serves Lou and Paul, he begins to find hope and purpose, even in the midst of Paul’s suffering and impending death.
Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Review
Chai has crafted a fine novel of ‘mighty change’ through forgetting self and loving one’s neighbor. --Richard Cracroft, BYU Magazine
About the Author
Nathan Keonaona Chai was born and raised in Salt Lake City. Despite a writing background in his family, he never intended to become a writer himself until he took a creative writing course on a whim. After some of his stories received positive acclaim, he entered a highly competitive national short story competition and received awards for two consecutive years. He went on to earn a masters degree in English with an emphasis in creative writing from BYU. Fire Creek, his first novel, is inspired in large part by his father’s bout with stomach cancer. Always a teacher, his father, Keo, never let the disease shake his faith or his character. Many of the conversations and ideas in Fire Creek are inspired by conversations he and his father had during the months he battled the disease. The novel was completed a month before his father passed away. Nathan has two children and makes his home in Lehi, Utah. He teaches full-time in BYU’s English Department, specializing in creative writing classes and rhetoric and composition.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Surprise! It's Really Good!,
By A. Matthews (Sandy, UT) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Fire Creek (Paperback)
I picked up a free copy of this book at a booksellers' conference in Salt Lake, mostly because I thought the cover art was interesting and fresh for the genre (especially the back cover). I must admit that I had attended the conference with my usual skepticism that anything remarkable would be debuting this year, since it has been my experience that most of the fiction featured in the Salt Lake conference is trite or mushy or poorly written or all three at once. I'd forgotten about this book completely until a week or so ago, when I found it in my trunk and thought I'd give it shot. I'm glad I did. The first chapter hooked me, and the depth and insight (not to mention an interesting plot) in the rest of the novel reeled me in. I recommend this novel whole-heartedly for all readers--something I haven't been able to do for Deseret-Book fare in a long time.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
As one who worked on the film,
By
This review is from: Fire Creek (Paperback)
Yes it is true that this book has been turned into a film. They are in the final stages of editing and it should be released hopefully summer 2006. I was very excited to see the Afganistan sets I built featured in the back cover art.The storyline in this book and film are absolutly incredible. Not many books can bring me to tears. Chai is an amazing writer (and a pretty great professor as well, but that is beside the point.) The story is full of depth and and very well developed characters. I only hope that the movie we have made really does it justice.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great Book, Great Teacher!,
By waldensailor "mca." (orange county, ca) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Fire Creek (Paperback)
so i might be a bit biased in this review, since i'm a previous creative writing student of the author. i really enjoyed his class and his enthusiasm for the craft and the arts generally, and as a result i wanted to see how well he applied the principles he taught in his own work. (he actually never mentioned his book in our class, and i found out about it only by chance after i'd moved on.)and now that i've gotten the preliminaries out of the way, on to the review: trying to be as objective as i can, i have to say that i loved this book. it has a depth and a soul to it that few novels or stories i've read recently manage. the story bgins with a young marine, jason chang, a "converted" athiest, trudging through another mindless patrol in afghanistan. jason's patrol is ambushed, and in the chaos that follows, jason thinks he hears something miraculous--something that saves his life. the trouble is, jason's best friend, rodney, is killed in the ambush and jason, himself injured, is sent home and left to make sense of what has happened as best he can. jason struggles to understand whether his "miracle" was authentic or imagined, and what the implications are if it was real. meanwhile, a young father, sick and desperate for money, moves in with his thirteen year old son. through a suprising turn of events, jason's search for answers soon entangles him with this father and son, who are themselves searching for god and miracles in their own way. the result is a strong plotline founded on real emotional and philosophical depth, making for a page-turner that you actually want to think carefully about after you've finished it. so that no one misunderstands, this book isn't another trite, weak-minded, apology for christianity or faith generally. (as a former philosophy major, i wouldn't have been able to finish such a book.) rather, this is something better: a well-crafted story with interesting, believable characters that circles the issue of why god allows horrible things to happen to good people. (by the way, jason's buddy rooster is by far my favorite character: i can almost gaurantee he'll make you laugh out loud several times, and you'll be surprised by how he manages to help jason in the end.) in fact, i think it would be more appropriate to say that this is a novel whose characters happen to have serious questions about god and faith and are looking for serious answers; it's not necessarily a book directly about religion per se at all, as religious affiliation or creed or worship services actually never come up. i strongly recommend this book for all readers. it's especially appropraite for anyone who isn't afraid to think deeply about the nature of faith and hope, or for anyone who's coping with the loss of a loved one or a similar tragedy. in fact, the only bad thing i can say about this novel is that i couldn't find a hardback edition, and my poor softcover is already showing stress from my having made a few friends read it. in summary, read this book! you'll enjoy it immensely and you'll be a better person for it--and when's the last time you were able to say that about a novel? --oh, and i almost forgot, the front cover says a movie version is coming out soon. i really hope that's true, but i haven't been able to find anything out about it. maybe the movie has a differrent name. if you have any details, i'd really appreciate it if you could post a review here to let me (and others) know.
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