Point of View

Before I Burn by Gaute Heivoll is written from the author’s point of view. Heivoll returned to his home town region as a successful writer thirty years after the month of terror during which a pyromaniac set ten fires and wrecked horror among the small towns and villages of this normally quiet community. Heivoll was just a few weeks old when the fires occurred; but, he’d heard the stories of the fires from his parents and from others all through the years. It was a subject that often came up in conversations many years after it was all over.

Heivoll naturally felt connected to his hometown; but, he also felt an almost inexplicable connection to the fires. As a baby he was christened at a church that was near a barn that had been burned down. His father helped to hunt down the...