A novelist and historian team up to tell the story of the October 1871 fire in the lumber town of Peshtigo, Wisconsin, vividly re-creating the personal and political battles leading to this monumental natural disaster, and delivering it from the lost annals of American history. 16-page insert. 3 maps.

"Novelist Denise Gess and historian William Lutz brilliantly restore the event to its rightful place in the forefront of American historical imagination." --Chicago Sun-Times

On October 8, 1871--the same night as the Great Chicago Fire--the lumber town of Peshtigo, Wisconsin, was struck with a five-mile-wide wall of flames, borne on tornado-force winds of one hundred miles per hour that tore across more than 2,400 square miles of land, obliterating the town in less than one hour and killing more than two thousand people.

At the center of the blowout were politically driven newsmen Luther Noyes and Franklin Tilton, money-seeking lumber baron Isaac Stephenson, parish priest Father Peter Pernin, and meteorologist Increase Lapham. In Firestorm at Peshtigo, Denise Gess and William Lutz vividly re-create the personal and political battles leading to this monumental natural disaster, and deliver it from the lost annals of American history.