Under A Flaming Sky

Daniel James Brown

pgs. 1 – 8 (Preface & Prolouge)

I only read this Preface and Prolouge of this book this week because when I began reading I realized how much information I could already pack into this reading letter with reading such a little amount. But this reflection will be good because of how many different quotes from the beginning I want to remember. So far the main topic of the book is about a man’s horrific past and how it has haunted him his entire life. “The expierince of one who has passed through a Hinckley (the name of the town) fire… the truth…. would seem like the wildest fancies of crazy imagination; no pen can portray its terrible reality; no tongue can even tell the bare truth of the awful ordeal.” — Angus Hay. I think that the previous statement best describes the story so far as a whole.

I quote I want to remember the most was, “We as humans, have the capacity to look death in the face, to take it’s measure, to spit at it and deny it’s will. In this age of terror, it reminds us that we have it in us to endure calamity, to rise above even the most trying circumstances, to replace fear with hope, and to throw love and light back into the face of violence….and darkness.” This quote really spoke to me because it was very enlightening. I read it at least several times before I could really comprehend the statement. Ms. Gibson told me that the book was about the gruesome details that come with being caught in a huge town fire. The book described it as many boarded trains to leave the town, and those who could not board the box carts walked to the next town. As the people burned alive fell out of three story buildings like rain. The prolouge ends by saying, that as children were tucked into bed and men and women lay in bed planning for the future and thinking for the past, none of them imagined what was really coming. None of them could have imagined that within thirty-six hours, people in places as far away as New York, and San Fransisco and even London, would be reading about the cruel hand that fate was about to deal them……….