Quiet Fires

Praise for Quiet Fires:

"A THOUGHTFUL, EMOTIONALLY PACKED LOVE STORY!"
"GRIPPING...INSPIRING."
"AN AMBITIOUS TALE THAT TAKES ON MUCH AND SUCCEEDS AT EVERYTHING."

"We seemed to share parts of the same puzzle, a nose that was a little too small, eyes that were a little too close, a puffy bottom lip that appeared to have been stung by some mean insect. Imperfect pieces that, when put together, made something beautiful and unique. We were holler girls. Two little girls with freckles on our faces and mischievous eyes who played in the dirt and loved Laura Ingalls Wilder books and got in trouble for going farther from the house than we were supposed to. Two girls, strong and independent and smart beyond our years, with rough edges like the ragged mountain peaks that surrounded our tiny speck of a town. Two girls who were at the same time both fearless and sensitive.
In a way, we were sisters."

Set against the backdrop of World War II, two poor girls coming of age in a small West Virginia town forge a deep friendship that endures through family pressures and personal ambitions. As they struggle with identity, independence, and family loyalties, their bond is transformed through love and a desire for freedom, while they naively eschew the limits of other people's expectations, ultimately leading to a forbidden passion that sets off a chain of events and brings devastating, unforeseen consequences.

In Quiet Fires, Koppisch's sixteenth novel, he tackles the complex issues of class, religion, morality, and individuality through the eyes of two young people navigating the pressures of an ignorant and intolerant world that seeks to impose its own definition of morality and dictate what they should be.