Woodsburner by John Pipkin

In 1844 Henry David Thoreau started a forest fire near Concord, Massachusetts, that destroyed 300 acres of woods and nearly destroyed the town. This book is about Thoreau, but also about other residents of the area, including a woman who has fled the famine in Ireland, an immigrant farmhand from Norway, a radical preacher, and a traveling salesman, in Concord just for the day. The author uses each character to illustrate life in 1840s Massachusetts in Woodsburner.