Shocked by a five-month arson spree that still left rural Virginia reeling, Washington Post reporter Monica Hesse drove right down to Accomack County to cover the trial of Charlie Smith, who pled guilty to sixty-seven matters of arson. But Charlie wasn’t lighting fires by itself: he previously an accomplice, his sweetheart Tonya Bundick.

Through her depiction from the dangerous shift that happened within their passionate relationship, Hesse brilliantly brings to life the once-thriving coastal community and its distressed inhabitants, who had recently been decimated by a punishing economy before they were terrified by a string of fires they cannot explain.

Incorporating this drama in to the long-overlooked background of arson in america, American Flames re-creates the anguished nights that quiet county spent lit up in flames, mesmerizingly evoking a microcosm of rural America – a get half gutted before the fires even started.