I thought this book was going to be about the Vail fire. After all, there’s a picture of Two Elk lodge burning right on the cover!

But that’s not what it’s about, not really.

I thought this was a niche book, for a narrow audience, those who remember this 1998 fire. But then I saw it getting mainstream reviews and actually selling and I wondered, do that many people care?

Not about the Vail fire, but about the Earth Liberation Front, which is what this book is really about.

As for the Vail fire… It was international news back in 1998. If for no other reason than Two Elk lodge sits on a ridge at the top of the mountain, how in the hell did they get up there? The logistics were beyond daunting.

Now if you’re looking for a delineation of what happened in Vail, and I was, you’ll find a chapter on that, details that are intriguing, but the fascinating thing is the writer, Matthew Wolfe, gets it wrong. I mean if you don’t know Vail, you won’t know, but if you do know…it won’t make sense. Wolfe keeps talking about the Two Elk expansion. There was no such thing. It was the BLUE SKY BASIN expansion, which is nowhere near Two Elk lodge.

Now my old friend Tony Wilson told me about delivering inaccurate European football scores to the TV newsreader on a Saturday night. His boss was pissed, said the European soccer scores late on a Saturday night didn’t make that much difference, but viewers would think if they got those wrong, what about the more major things, could the audience trust the station to get the big things right?

The whole delineation of Two Elk, the landscape at the top of the mountain, is confusing and oftentimes inaccurate. And this is not complicated, it’s a physical plant, not theoretical physics. And anybody who was around back then could tell you about the issues with the Blue Sky Basin expansion, but Wolfe did not do the work, or did not get it right, or both.

So I’m slogging along, waiting for the book to get to Vail, realizing that “Fires in the Night” is really not about the Vail arson, but the Earth Liberation Front and…

There’s a lot of backstory, a lot of setting the scene, but then…

Wolfe starts introducing the characters, and then describing the arsons/actions.

So at times “Fires in the Night” is absolutely riveting, and at others if not quite a slog, less than calling out to you in the night to be read.

But the book is definitely worth reading.

No, let me say that I’m not going to wholeheartedly recommend “Fires in the Night,” because you may get bogged down and put it down. But if you have an interest in the subject and…

What makes the book so damn good is the people. WHAT IN THE HELL WAS GOING THROUGH THEIR MINDS?

Most of these people were offbeat, on the fast track to nowhere. But not all of them, some were college educated. So they’re in the crunchy Pacific northwest, mostly Eugene, Oregon, and they’re focused on climate change and physical destruction of the landscape and although they’re all fascinated with the established groups, playing by the rules, going through the motions, they didn’t think these were having any effect, so they decided to take matters into their own hands.

And they were very, very good at it. As in not getting caught for years. And how they are caught is in accident, law enforcement believes a member was involved in an action that they were not.

So some of these people are from good families, others from bad. Some were square pegs in a round hole, others could function fine in society.

Then again, keeping a regular job? If they worked, they were at the bottom of the ladder. Then again, most were in their late teens or twenties. But these are not the people we read about in the news, going to college, lamenting the loss of opportunity, no, these people are working to survive, at best. Living the kind of life you could live in the late sixties and seventies, where you could pay the bills on minimum wage and what was going through your brain was more important than what you owned.

Now they never wanted to kill people, only property. But the potential downside! You could go to prison for decades! What kind of people would take this risk?

That’s what I found most interesting. I could never see myself in their shoes. But they existed.

Now things are different today, because there are cameras everywhere. Just watch TV to be aware, especially British television. Unless you’re alone by yourself in your bathroom, beware, you are not alone.

And the government really cracked down on what became labeled ecoterrorism.

And if you live on the east coast, this story may be incomprehensible. The vastness of the landscape at stake and the people without traditional roots in education, all the base values that east coasters take for granted.

So when this book gives the details of the actions themselves, it’s as good as any film, tense and true. But the history and machinations in between and…

You will marvel and then be bugged at some of the words. You can’t read much without encountering a word you do not know the meaning of, probably have never heard before. Is this really the writer’s lexicon, did these words just pop out of his brain, or did he rewrite with a thesaurus? He is secretly showing off, thinking his erudition is in evidence, but really it’s laughable. These words are completely unnecessary. I noticed it and as soon as Felice picked up the book she commented on it too.

But who these people were, how they dedicated themselves to these actions, took all these risks…

I can’t stop thinking about it.