Kirkus Review 
First-novelist Siporin, a former NPR reporter covering Oregon
and the Pacific Northwest, offers an excruciatingly taut and horrific
tale of hate-crimes against blacks, Jews, and lesbians by vicious
young racists with guns, baseball bats, steel-tipped boots, and
a wardrobe of ill-fitting Nazi uniforms. Despondent Portland teacher
Hannah Turnfeld, in the courthouse awaiting the trial of Aryan
supremacist Robert Hanson for instigating the murder of one of
her students, meets Fil, a dreadlocked young man on hand to document
the relationship between Hanson's group and the skinheads, and
the two intercede when a trio of swastika-waving punks acts up.
Inexorably, they all meet again up in rural Elk Hill, where Hannah
is propping up her brother's family after his wife's rape, Fil
is interviewing a group of lesbians whose house been shot up by
hate-mongers, and the neo-Nazis are seeking new converts with
headline grabbing violence. More tragedy looms, including a hanging
and a firebombing, before a forest fire threatens to consume Hannah,
together with an unrepentant skinhead. Neither the land nor the
people living on this tiny corner of it will ever be the same
again.
Gruesome and powerful, with a shudder on almost every page: With
awesome skill, Siporin can switch from detailing the ugly genesis
and aftermath of racism to evoking the physical and emotional
exhaustion of firefighting to setting a tender scene for a child's
favorite bedtime story.