David Cappella's Blog

I recommend David Cappella’s YA-Adult novel, Kindling. A fifteen-year-old boy, Zeke Titcomb, is a fire setter in his small rural Maine town. There are reasons for his pyromania: among them, bullying, social isolation, overbearing ineffectual parenting. There is good in Zeke’s life, too: an English teacher, Mr. Coccinella, a poet-librarian, Mr. Resnick, a psychologist, Dr. Elizabeth Proctor. They see his intelligence and potential, but their influence cannot keep Zeke from striking out in the best way he knows how.

Cappella’s voice, moxie, and language are delights. The novel unfolds through alternating narratives: Zeke’s first person voice in a journal he keeps that begins each chapter and a third person, omniscient voice that renders events that Zeke can’t know and deepens characterizations of the residents of Chaldea, Maine. Through Zeke’s voice you see a boy coming to language, putting to use vocabulary he’s learning from reading and Mr. Coccinella and becoming more expressive and self-reflective in his writing.

You’ll feel rural Maine as winter is coming on. You’ll form vivid, visceral images of the fires and their aftermath. You’ll resonate to Cappella’s allusions to music, literature, and history. Kindling will carry you away in a vivid fictional dream. It’s a page-turner that will propel you to the final page.

Here is a recent review of KINDLING from The Kennebec Journal and The Sentinel:

http://www.centralmaine.com/2016/03/0...