How can a massive fire in an isolated corner of a forest impact the lives of firefighters? “Easy,” you say? Perhaps, only because most of us can hardly imagine the dangers faced by firefighters, or in how many ways the fire threatens their lives and their families’ futures. The havoc created in this isolated company-owned lumber town, though spared by the flames, nevertheless turned the lives of the inhabitants topsy-turvy.

Ben Adams, who had been a veteran medical corpsman in World War II, is attempting to make a new life for himself as far away from his Connecticut home town as he can possibly get. He meets and falls in love with Ellen, a beautiful young lady who was born and raised in this back-woods town. She is uncertain about her feelings for him and has moved out of town and into the valley to figure things out. When she hears Ben is on the fire-line, hell won’t stop her from returning to Riverhead. Driving on rough back roads from the Oregon Coast, she braves the possibility of running straight into the fire itself.

Although the road to happiness is never well paved, for them their destiny was signed, sealed and delivered on Monday, July 4, 1950, by a forest fire out of control in the Oregon Coast Range. Their paths are separated after Ellen is severely injured in a collision between the pick-up she is driving along smoky logging roads delivering food supplies to Riverhead’s two fire crews and one driven by Bart, a jealous husband driving in the opposite direction aiming to kill Ben.

Then LIFE, in its unfathomable synchronicity acts with its own intentions, and changes the lives of Ben and Ellen forever.

But are the changes really for the best? Will Ellen and Ben find each other after the smoke dies down? Will the power of dreams sustain their relationship, as they try to carve new lives for themselves? Once the cross-currents of rage, jealousy and misunderstanding have taken their toll, can love still triumph? Is there more than one definition for such triumph? And what are the boundaries of love's reach, when time and events tear at our bonds?

Firestorm is an intimate tale of the sorting of memories and the search for both resolution and a future in the wake of a natural disaster. As with all cataclysms of nature that interface with living communities--no matter how obscure--human stories are exposed and tangled even beyond their own weaknesses, longings, aspirations and unfinished business.

Ben and Ellen's story, as told by Eleanor Weber Griffitts, reminds us just how powerful relationships can be in affecting our lives, regardless of how destiny shapes their outcome.

A well-written story! Well worth the read!

Exclusively available through Acorn Publishing.

Soft Cover US $16.00
(List Price - US $18.95)
(ISBN 0-9678801-9-X)
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About the A U T H O R

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Eleanor Weber Griffitts began writing at age 9. Her poetry was published locally even as a teenager in high school. She stretched to hone her literary skills by writing short stories and fiction in college. As an adult, Eleanor wrote human interest stories for a Salem newspaper, for which she also had her own by-line.

Ms. Griffitts' professional career in Social Work was replete with rich experiences that allowed her to interact with people in diverse stages of development and critical junctures of human need. She served in the following capacities:

• Counselor to juvenile deliquent girls
• Title V program director, providing job training and educational opportunities for welfare clients
• Senior advocacy program director in a Tri-County Community Action program
• Social services director for two coastal hospitals

For the past ten years, she has invested her creative energies in writing novels.

Eleanor grew up on Long Island, New York. She went on to high school and college from her hometown of Merrick. This novelist worked and lived in several regions of the Southern United States and near the Atlantic coast before settling in Oregon along the Pacific coast. The special childhood memories of Jones Beach provided a hint of the beauty and grandeur to come in later life, when 300 miles of northwestern beaches would serve to nourish not only her family life with four children, but also her artistic talents.

Eleanor feels gifted to have traveled through Europe - - - touring Bavaria, southern Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The crowning experience was a trip to China in 1989. Her writing weaves strong fibers of spirituality into characters, who are as interesting as they are credible. With a deep belief in the resilience of the human spirit, Eleanor Griffitts invites us to take stock, listen and unleash our own untapped potential in mind, body and spirit.