Things You Save in a Fire by Katherine Center

Things You Save in a Fire by Katherine Center
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

St Martin’s Press
August 2019
Fiction
Rating: 4/5

I received a digital copy of this book in exchange for an unbiased review from NetGalley and St Martin’s Press.

Cassie Hanwell knew she had to work hard to prove herself in a male dominated profession. She focused her life on being the best firefighter after working her way up to being a paramedic. Unfortunately, she walled herself off emotionally after several life-altering events on her sixteenth birthday. She learned how to fit in with the guys at the Austin Fire Department with their bawdy jokes and pranks.

Cassie continued to live in Austin near her father, Ted, since her mother, Diana, left them to move to Massachusetts to be with Wallace. This happened ten years ago on her 16th birthday, a day she woul always remember with anger and sadness.

Just as she feels her life is going according to plan, until she is taken by surprise at award ceremony. She was anxious thinking about accepting the honor on stage and having to make a speech. Cassie has never been good with talking about feelings or emotions. She never expects to see let alone feel the inappropriate touching of the Austin councilman, Heath Thompson, when she accepts her award. As traumatic memories of him from high school cloud her brain, she narrowly avoids arrest after assaulting him at the ceremony.

Just as she is fretting over the consequences of her actions and probable loss of job, her mother calls her from Rockport, MA. Apparently, she’s been living in a small house making a living selling her pottery. She calls to begs Cassie to help her adjust after losing sight in one eye. With not many options, Cassie transfers to the Lillian Fire Department and moves in with her mother.

Soon, Cassie finds that her laser focus on her career is preventing her from moving forward in her life. She begins to understand the mother who left on her birthday. Life is fluid and nothing is black and white. Holding onto the past will just keep you in the past. Sometimes you have to be vulnerable and risk the step into the unknown to propel yourself in a new direction.

The things you save in a fire could very well be the things that save you from yourself. This is an enjoyable and predictable story but touching none the less.



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