John Pipkin’s debut novel Woodsburner springs from a little-known event in the life of one of America’s most iconic figures, Henry David Thoreau. On April 30, 1844, a year before he built his cabin on Walden Pond, Thoreau accidentally started a forest fire that destroyed three hundred acres of the Concord woods—an event that altered the landscape of American thought in a single day. Against the background of Thoreau’s fire, Pipkin’s ambitious debut penetrates the mind of the young philosopher while also painting a panorama of the young nation at a formative moment.
“A superb historical fiction as well as a complex and provocative novel of ideas—Pulitzer Prize material.”
—Kirkus Reviews, starred
Read the rave review for Woodsburner in The Washington Post, visit JohnPipkin.com and read Pipkin’s article in The Boston Globe, in which he examines the true events behind the novel.