Would you return to the landscape you watched burn as a child, especially if you and everyone else believed that the manic, wind-fuelled, merciless fire was your fault?

Set in a fictional version of the real Main-à-Dieu, Nova Scotia, where a 1976 wildfire caused catastrophic devastation, The Fire Monster, tells the tale of a skilled oil sands worker who returns to the Cape Breton fishing village where, as a child, he was blamed for causing the fire that tore through the local community, consuming bush, trees, houses, boats, cars, animals and the century-old gothic church. At once a poetry collection, a story inspired by true events, and a visually stunning comic-book adventure, The Fire Monster is a mixed genre story for the ages that explores the aftermath of tragedy, the frayed bonds of friendship and family, and ’s redemptive power.

Anita Lahey's poems have appeared in the Malahat Review, the Antigonish Review, Prairie Fire, This Magazine, in Ottawa buses as part of the Transpoetry competition, and in The New Canon: An Anthology of Canadian Poetry. She has won the Great Blue Heron Poetry Contest, Ralph Gustafson Prize for Best Poem, and first prize for poetry in Pagitica's annual literary competition. Lahey is the editor of Arc: Canada's Poetry Magazine and lives in Montreal.

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