In 2009, as the Black Saturday fires swept Victoria, Robert Kenny winner of the 2008 Prime Minister's Prize for History defended his home in Redesdale. His fire plan was sound and he was prepared. But the reality of the fire was more ferocious and more unpredictable than he could have imagined. By the end of the day, his house and the life contained within were gone. The years that followed were marked by grieving, recovering and eventually rebuilding - a process starkly framed by the choice between remembering and forgetting.

The resulting book is a riveting story of personal loss, woven with intellectual and historical investigations of fire in the Australian landscape, mythologies of fire, and ideas of loss, home and community. This is stimulating writing, edged with beauty, grief and hope.