Customer Reviews

The Fireman's Wife: A Novel

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I so wanted to love this one. Written by an award winning author from Georgia. Fiction with a strong Southern voice is my go-to genre. Character development that makes me love at least one of the characters is more important to me than lively plot.
This book, which should have had both, had neither. I absolutely hated the main character, the actual fireman's wife. Reading through the chapters, expecting my feeling to change, I found instead that I was thinking up ways to kill off the woman. As a mother, I've made my mistakes. Stupid ones. But never, would I have blundered motherhood like this woman. Perhaps writing from the female perspective was the problem. Perhaps he just doesn't completely understand that a mom who behaved in such a careless manner is in need of a major transformation before I'm going to warm to her. By the end of the book I was just relieved not to have to be with this shallow woman for one more minute.
As far as the Southern flavor...maybe so Jack, but not the South I know. Certainly not the South I want to hang out in during my down time. No charm. Not a whole lot of beauty.
He did his homework from the fireman's perspective and I did learn a lot about fighting fires...but that's not what I was looking for.
Men, I suppose, would like this book more than woman. So if you're a man...give it a go, Jack Riggs can write. But if you are of the female persuasion, maybe take a pass on The Fireman's Wife.

This is a book about choices and regrets. It's about not leaving things unsaid. I didn't realize how much I was into this book until about 3/4 of the way through, when the really dramatic thing happens (I'm definitely not going to give it away here). At that point, I realized that I really had developed a connection to the characters, to the point that I was almost in tears reading about their pain.

I entered the lives of 2 others when I read this book and was able to see heartbreak, disappointment, parenthood, a marriage, and the state of SC from their views. Written any other way, I don't believe this book would be near as good. Being from SC, I can say the setting is so accurate I could imagine myself in the different places at that time period. This is a book that should definitely be read by those from any walk of life.

The Fireman's Wife is a fantastic book. I really enjoyed all of the characters and how each of them had so many layers. It is beautifully written. This would be a great book for a book club to discuss.

I am from South Carolina. I grew up in the Northwestern part of SC and moved to the lowcountry. Riggs depicted the feelings and images of both areas extraordinarily well. I quickly became immersed in the characters. However, I felt that Riggs lost continuity with the characters towards the end.

This is a quick, great summer read. The author draws you in immediately and the storyline moves right along. The lack of communication between Cassie and Peck is a little frustrating but overall the characters are realistic. As a lifelong resident of South Carolina (a few years younger than the main characters), I found the geographical setting as well as the community relationships exactly as I remember in the mid to late 60's.

I'm not going to rehash the story yet again. This isn't the type of book that I normally read though I do read a wide variety. Jack is a friend of a friend that recommended it to me.

I was very surprised that I enjoyed it very much. It sucked me in. I liked the characters and thought they were quite realistic and had believable flaws. The story was good and moved along in spite of not having an explosion or murder or some such every other page. It really drew out the emotions.

I'm in for the next book by Jack.

Yesterday I read The Fireman's Wife written by Jack Riggs and was anticipating a just so-so read. Surprisingly, I really liked it. Partly, I am sure because I am married to a 32 year veteran volunteer fire fighter/assistant chief and also because I liked the story line.
It is written in the first person, alternating chapters between the husband (Peck) and the wife (Cassie). It takes place in the low country and mountains of the Carolinas.
There is a 17 year old daughter, a great kid, who is on the all-star soft ball team but not very involved in the plot other that her emotion levels, etc.
The storyline is based on Cassie who had great plans for her life, who wanted to go on to college and enter a profession but ends up falling in love, getting pregnant and marrying. She never gets over the resentment of having to give up her dream.
Peck, I believe, has the greater conflict of being the best fire chief he can possibly be, keeping his team of firefighters well trained and staffed and at the same time attempting to be a wonderful husband and keeping Cassie happy and helping her to feel fulfilled.
Cassie's chapters for the most part are about her feelings and desires to get away and start a new life, the kind of life she had always hoped to have. Peck's chapters are filled with all the mundane things that firefighters are involved with as well as the horrific incidents they must deal with.
Each summer Cassie takes their daughter, Kelly, and returns to the mountains where she was raised and spends time with her mother who is a wonderfully drawn character.
Peck remains behind to do what a fire chief does. I found this to be much more Peck's story, actually, than Cassie's. Or perhaps I just became much more engaged with his character than with her's. His is by far the more sympathetic and well rounded character. I loved how his men seemed more like brothers than co-workers and could identify with that as I have seen it happen with my own husband's department.
The inevitable happens and Cassie becomes involved with someone else and for a time believes that this is her ticket out of a life she had not planned for herself. But Thomas Woolfe was right. "You can't go home again." So Cassie has this inward struggle (and we see it in real life almost every day). This particular year when she goes to the mountains she must face the situation and her demons and decide what she will commit to.
For me, this is where the story really began. Cassie in the mountains with her mother and daughter and Peck at home with the car accidents, drownings, fires, and all that firemen deal with. And also Peck and his fellow firefighter buddies and their fun down times.
I liked the book, though I thought Cassie's character to be a little flat. I would recommend it for a quick read to anyone interested in firefighting, ambulance chasing, or women going through life changing struggles. But if you are looking for something of real substance or depth you won't find it here. However sometimes we just need a good quick read and The Fireman's Wife was that.

This is an unusual book in that the author depicts a troubled marriage of some fifteen years finally reaching a breaking point due in large part to the role that both geography and weather have played in their lives. Cassie met Peck Johnson after her senior year in high school on a visit to Myrtle Beach, SC. Her pregnancy forced her to curtail college plans and move to the marsh lands of SC with Peck. Her complete estrangement from her fundamentalist pastor father and thereby from her home in the mountains of NC, combined with her realization that she profoundly dislikes the way of life in the coastal lands, have left her unhappy for all these years. Her many threats to leave have largely been met with stoicism and patience by Peck.

Peck's recent promotion to chief of a fire station in Garden City Beach only aggravates her solitude and distress, which she seeks to alleviate with an increasingly obvious affair with Clay Taylor, a fireman at Peck's station. Much of what occurs in the book is a result of Cassie deciding to escape from her miserable life by moving to Walhalla, SC, with Clay where he has taken a job as fire chief. But there are complications. Foremost is the anger of fifteen year old daughter Kelly, a superb softball player and a daddy's girl. At this point in her life, it seems that anything undertaken by Cassie is undermined by her indecisiveness. She wonders if she is not simply exchanging one fireman for another.

The book is organized as alternating chapters, first from Cassie's view, then Peck's. The author does not shy away from gratuitous mayhem, as he has Peck in his capacity as a fireman attending more death scenes from a variety of accidents over a couple of weeks than most fireman in a large city would witness in a lifetime. A prolonged drought in the area casts a gloomy pall over the entire area, but more ominously looms prophetically for its potential for large, uncontrollable wild fires.

The book is disappointing on many fronts. The non-communication between Cassie and Peck goes largely unexplained, both being rather mild-mannered, likeable people, who apparently are quite fond of each other. The geographical explanation is insufficient. Peck also is depicted rather one-dimensionally: if he is not surfing, he is seems to be waist-deep in the muck of the marsh lands. Cassie is the more sympathetic character, but her inability to adapt to life with Peck as a young woman and her non-stop anxieties seem peculiar. There are many - too many - scenes of being on the road in a car with, of course, at least one party being sullen. Despite a certain level of appeal, the book suffers from repetitiveness, which scarcely hides a lack of imagination, and from a decided lack of realistic emotions and behavior. The book feels pieced together with an ending that is no more satisfactory than Cassie's strange emotionalism.

Cassie Johnson has been married for 15 years to Peck Johnson. After discovering she was pregnant at the end of her summer romance with Peck, Cassie is forced to give up her dreams of attending college, is disowned and cut off from her preacher father and her beloved mountain home, and she is left with little choice but to marry Peck and move to his home in the low country. Their marriage has been rocky and Cassie has never been able to get over the loss of her dreams or the fact that her father never let her back into his life and died without knowing his grandchild.

The book is set in the summer of 1970. Cassie is about to go to the mountains to spend time with her mother as she always does. However, this time she is unsure if she is coming back. Peck, the new fire chief of the Garden City Beach Fire Department, can't really take the time off work to chase her. The area is in the midst of a drought and fires are threatening the area. Besides, Peck knows he loves Cassie and that he needs to give her the time to figure things out.

The Fireman's Wife is a beautiful story that is about shades of gray. It's about hearing both sides of the story and being able to understand both points of view. Both Cassie and Peck are sympathethic characters so I didn't really end up taking sides.

Cassie has mourned all of her losses for fifteen years and has never truly engaged in her life with Peck. Peck loves his wife and daughter tremendously. He just doesn't know how to give Cassie whatever is missing from her life and feels he needs to let her go to figure it out.

The descriptions of the both of the landscapes in this story are beautiful. Whether describing Cassie's beautiful and lush mountain home or Peck's dry and drought-stricken low country marsh, the word pictures are vivid.

I loved this book. I thought it was poignant and gripping. In fact, I would have devoured it if I would've had the free time.

I would highly recommend this story to anyone who loves reading about relationships. Just make sure you have your tissues handy.