THE TRUTH ABOUT FIRE

Neo-Nazis in cahoots with the Christian right.

Professor Gillian Grace, an expert in modern German history, accepts a post at a small college in northern Wisconsin. Hoping to find a quiet haven for herself and her part-Indian daughter, she is troubled by the racism she and the girl occasionally encounter. Gillian suspects that Wisconsin right-to-lifers, neo-Nazis, and downtrodden born-again types have formed a loose alliance with one another, a suspicion that’s confirmed by young and handsome grad student Michael Landis, who had a Native American friend who was mysteriously murdered. It looks like the Sons of the Shepherd, a fundamentalist Christian sect, may have been involved. What Gillian and Michael don’t know: Lucy Wirth, forlorn wife of an infertile hardware-store owner, has been permitting the horny pastor of the Sons of the Shepherd to, um, spill his seed so that she can conceive a child at last. She knows it’s a sin, but. . . . She’s got mental problems anyway. As for Gillian and Michael, they have sweaty sex, eat lots of lentils, and try to figure it all out. Meanwhile, over in Germany, neo-Nazis are gathering, and, according to Michael, it looks like the local yokels may be connected to them somehow. The couple travel to Germany to investigate, though being seen with Michael in public is embarrassing for Gillian, not wanting to be perceived as “the lady professor and her pretty boy.” Back in the US: Lucy Wirth is blackmailed into spying on Gillian, and, ere long, Michael dies defusing a homemade bomb. But earnest Gillian saves the world for democracy.

Well-meaning thriller of sorts, marred by academic fussiness and extraneous historical detail. Uninspired debut in fiction by the author of a respected work on population control (Reproductive Rights and Wrongs, not reviewed).