Emma Kavanagh’s The Time of the Fire is not 100% sure what type of novel that it wants to be. There is the central point of view story about Robyn Sandoval who lives in the small town Californian town of Destino and finds her biological father dead on a day when the town is under threat from a bushfire. Then there is the story of Scarlett Morgan, who is actually Robyn Sandoval but in an alternative life, also facing the same fire emergency. And there is also the story of Mags Reys and her fraught relationship with her dominating mother Bonnie. Over all of this is the story of the mega fire that threatens the town (in two different realities). And while all of these strands kind of come together, plenty of disbelief has to be suspended to get there.
The book opens with the death of Harper Morgan in a car accident. Thirty years later, her daughter Robyn, who was adopted by the wealthy Sandovals, is about to take over the company which owns half the town of Destino. After Robyn finds her biological father Mack dead in his cabin she has what can only be termed a break. Robyn finds herself in the life of Scarlett Morgan, a version of herself in an alternate world in which her mother lived and it was Sandovals who died in the car accident. Luckily, in this other world her boyfriend Zeke is a physicist who is able to explain the many-worlds theory to her and quickly comes to accept that she is not just psychotic. In both worlds a major fire is bearing down on Destino and the very different ways in which the town developed and prepared for this type of disaster in the two realities will have a bearing on its impact.
As always, many worlds theory (that every single decision creates a new branch of reality) while a fun concept (cf Sliding Doors afer which this particular subgenre is now named) raises many more questions than it answers (not just: why this particular alternative world? why this particular person? and if every decision Robyn/Scarlett makes in that world creates a new world, how does she go back to the same one every time). Readers who cannot just buy into this premise will probably not make it to the end of the book.
At its centre, The Time of the Fire is a mystery story in which Robyn gets clues to the mystery she is trying to solve by gathering clues from the way things turned out for the same people in her alternative life. But it is also a disaster story, in which Kavanagh explores the way people react to oncoming disaster. And it is a story about nature versus nurture – exploring the different ways that Robyn/Scarlett’s lives turned out given different family situations. And, finally, it is a story about families and secrets and the impact of those on relationships – particularly in the relationship between Mags and Bonnie. Along the way Kavanagh also provides a scarily atmospheric rendering of an out-of-control bushfire that will put Australian readers in mind of the Black Saturday bushfires of 2009 and the catastrophic East coast bushfire season of 2019-20.
The Time of the Fire uses a fairly well used speculative hook that requires more than a little suspension of disbelief. The fact that Kavanagh can hold all of the strands together, develop the amount of tension that she does and bring the story home with a bit of emotional heft in the way that she does is impressive even if it means not examining how she got there too closely.
The Time of the Fire by Emma Kavanagh
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