The seed of Deborah Hufford’s new historical fiction novel, The Fire Born, was planted when she moved to the Milwaukee area from Iowa about 35 years ago. Hufford and her husband quickly heard they needed to check out Wisconsin’s great “Up North,” and when she did, she found a land rich in stories.
One piece of that history she grew “fascinated” with was the tragedy of the Peshtigo Fire. The wildfire burned more than one million acres of land in northeastern Wisconsin on Oct. 8, 1871 – the same day as the Great Chicago Fire. It was overshadowed by the big city news to the south, even though between 1,500 and 2,500 people died in Wisconsin compared to the approximately 300 deceased in Chicago. 
For years, the story stuck with Hufford, who has had a long career as a writer and editor, including work for Better Homes and Gardens, Country Home and Milwaukee Magazine, in addition to teaching writing workshops and typography at the University of Iowa. Hufford was afraid she would never finish her debut novel, Blood to Rubies, a historical fiction that takes place in the American West during the Civil War, after a struggle with kidney failure and a heart attack. But Hufford, 70 at the time, found out that her husband would be a match as a kidney donor and that she had sold Blood to Rubies to a publisher on the same day. The book, published in 2023, became a bestseller.
The Fire Born, her second novel, taps into the history of the dual 1871 fires, as well as Wisconsin and Chicago’s rich history. It follows four characters: Chicago Mayor William Butler Ogden; a lumberjack (and philosopher) named Big Mo; a Swedish immigrant named Delia; and Zelda, a lion tamer from Turkey, drawn to Wisconsin’s booming circus industry. In advance of Hufford’s upcoming book launch for The Fire Born on Oct. 14 at Boswell Book Co., we asked her a few questions about how she brought these characters to life:
Can you tell us more about the research. Where did you find material for this story?
The Chicago Fire and Peshtigo Fire have a lot of eerie linkages, one of the main being that one man owned most of the land which burned in both Chicago and Peshtigo and he was the first mayor of Chicago, William Butler Ogden. I read a lot of books about both fires. There’s a lot more about the Chicago Fire, so I relied on four or five books about the Peshtigo Fire. One in particular, Firestorm in Peshtigo [by Denise Gess and William Lutz], is a really great, well researched book. I began to meld the two stories together and used William Butler Ogden as the link between them.
One of the things that makes both of my books unique in fiction is I’ve included over 70 archival photographs. They are headers in each chapter and are illustrative of the action and tell their own stories, and then I have an in-depth bibliography at the end about all the photographs.
What type of journey do these characters go on?
They’re all affected by the fire, and they’re all affected by William Ogden in more ways than just the fire. One of the things about my book that I hope is a redeeming quality is that it not only addresses a lot of the terrible carnage that Manifest Destiny and the robber barons caused in the name of progress, but it’s also about the social movements that came out of that carnage. I have a lot about the transcendentalists and the muck-rakers, a lot of that movement came out of Chicago. A lot of other movements, too – environmentalism came out of it, women’s rights, anti-slavery. My character Delia becomes involved in the beginning of the humane society movement. These characters become involved in these movements in the aftermath of Peshtigo and Chicago, so there is some redemption in these two horrific conflagrations.
What has reception been from early readers?
I’ve gotten some great blurbs and testimonials. I was so pleased that John Gurda was generous enough to give me a blurb. I also got one from Jacquelyn Mitchard, who wrote for the Milwaukee Journal for many years and authored The Deep End of the Ocean, and blurbs from about five other bestselling authors in historical fiction, authors I really admire. The big enchilada, I never thought I’d get her, is Diana Gabaldon, who wrote the Outlander series.
This book is a cautionary tale. History is repeating itself. Of course, it always does. We’re facing a lot of the same environmental issues that they faced in the 1870s. Data centers is a big example, so are forest fires and fire management in the west and all over Europe and the really creepy thing is they are starting to see these fires that have tornadic winds, extremely weird and powerful fire forces that are intense, like the Peshtigo Fire.
The Fire Born comes out on Oct. 6. Hufford will speak at a book launch on Oct. 14 at 6:30 p.m. at Boswell Book Co.
