Who By Fire novel by Mary L. Tabor
Literary & Lyrical: A meditation on memory, desire, and the truths we speak only to ourselves. A haunting meditation on love, loss, and the complexities of memory, Who By Fire is the acclaimed novel from literary master Mary L. Tabor. Originally praised for its lyrical structure and emotional depth, this reissue brings a quiet yet resonant story to a new generation of readers. Told from the perspective of a male narrator unraveling the tangled threads of his past, Who By Fire explores the fault lines of desire and betrayal with rare restraint and intimacy. In luminous prose, Tabor captures the unspoken truths between people--the things we hide, the moments we revisit, and the love that refuses to let go. Critics and authors alike have celebrated the novel's beauty and complexity. Pulitzer Prize-winner Robert Olen Butler calls it "a lovely, innovative, deeply engaging novel about how it is that human beings make their way through the mysteries of existence." Lee Martin describes it as "a lyric meditation on love and desire," while Marly Swick hails it as "intricately layered... this is beautiful truth." Part of Empress Editions' Spring 2026 list, Who By Fire reflects the publisher's commitment to literary fiction that explores midlife reinvention and intellectual power. This edition will be released across all formats and supported by a robust campaign, including potential for podcast adaptations, film/TV development, and immersive reader experiences. Mary L. Tabor will collaborate closely with Empress Editions on the book's relaunch.
Who By Fire wins Notable Indie Fiction Award
Who By Fire, told by Robert, Lena’s husband, as he attempts to understand her affair with Isaac, an affair that he has become aware of after her death. He imagines the story of his wife and her lover. Robert the narrator is trying to know himself in the story he is writing as he tells his imagined version of his wife’s betrayal. The story becomes a paradoxical tale of his own undoing that he comes to realize by telling it. In the epigraph to the novel, Robert says, “Life has a way of raveling. Story discovers how it happened. That is the fiction.” This is the reader’s first introduction to Robert’s persona, a man who must control the world he inhabits. The telling of the story as he imagines it, reveals more than he would have wished and as this occurs, his telling moves into real time, for there is no way for him to deal with what he discovers except to report what is actually happening versus what he has imagined.
Who By Fire Reviews:
Robert Olen Butler, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for A Good Scent From a Strange Mountain: Mary L. Tabor's Who By Fire is a lovely, innovative, deeply engaging novel about how it is that human beings make their way through the mysteries of existence.
Lee Martin, author of Break the Skin and The Bright Forever, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize: Mary Tabor’s Who By Fire, is a lyric meditation on love and desire, one that will catch you up in the blaze of its eroticism, its tender evocation of love and the passions and accommodations of a life lived through the flesh and through the imagination. Can memory lead to forgiveness? Who by Fire explores that question in a story I won’t soon forget. The beauty of the prose, the nuances of the characters, the ever-building plot—everything is in place for a novel that will touch you in all the right ways.
Marly Swick, author of Paper Wings and The Evening News: Who By Fire is a profound and lyrical novel, deeply felt and deeply moving. Intricately layered, this novel loops through time with the dare-devil courage and grace of a seasoned stunt pilot. In the narrator's unflinching journey of self-discovery, he comes to understand the past, both his failures and his saving graces. In the end, it is a hero's journey, both for the narrator and the reader. This is beautiful truth.
Michael Johnson, foreign correspondent and writer for The International Herald Tribune, American Spectator, Open Letters Monthly and The Columnists.com: Mary Tabor’s captivating story of love and death tackles the tangle of relationships within and outside the bonds of marriage. Her eye-popping knowledge of men’s and women’s behavior is effortlessly recounted as couples face their anguished choices. Set in a world of art, music, anthropology and science, her novel enlightens the mind while it stirs the emotions. She does all this in a confident style of prose that ranks her alongside the finest novelists working today.
Who By Fire wins Notable Literary Fiction Award Excerpt of review: The novel’s unusual structure is one of its best features. One reviewer describes it as “a painting in process,” where Tabor, as a painter, focuses on different aspects of the story, adding detail, color, music, and history to each part of the whole until at the end the entire work and all its beauty come to the forefront.
Who By Fire returns time and again to anecdotes of random people committing acts of bravery as well as the controlled fire Robert witnessed in Iowa as a younger man. Serving as a counterpoint to the main story, these fragments reveal the person Robert is and the profound change taking place inside him.
Tabor employs artistic and musical concepts to describe people and situations in a way that makes these descriptions central to understanding the novel. Unlike many other novels, discussions about physics, psychology, art, and music and not just erudite fluff, but actually give the story texture and depth, moving it along.
One section discusses the difference in the use of perspective in a work by Vermeer and one by Matisse. It then transitions into a discussion of how individuals can perceive objects and situations in completely different ways depending on their perspective.
Tabor likewise describes the idea of perfect pitch in music, then artfully turning it around to describe a person with perfect pitch in terms of being able to pick up subtle cues in conversation, in the tone of another’s voice, to discern what the speaker is really saying and feeling.
Multilayered, cerebral, and at the same time powerfully sensual, this novel discusses love in its beauty, pain and complexity. In her award-winning book, Tabor paints a realistic and touching picture of marriage, friendship and family.
Who By Fire bursts into flame on the first page with a description of a spectacular controlled barn fire in Iowa farm country. The fire theme seems to pervade the story metaphorically as characters lead their risky lives. This is more than an urban love story. Set in Washington, D.C., It is a dissection of the pleasures and turmoil that straying spouses inevitably experience – and the deadening effect on the betrayed. Ms. Tabor takes the time to develop characters so that you care about what they are going through.
Laura Sesana, columnist, reviews Who By Fire: I absolutely LOVED this book. In fact, it has been the best book I’ve read in a long time and wished I hadn’t finished it as quickly as I did. ... One of the things that stand out the most about the novel is its unusual structure. One reviewer describes it as “a painting in process,” where the author focuses on different aspects of the story, adding detail, color, music, and history to each part of the whole until at the end the entire work and all its beauty come to the forefront.
Margaret Brown, publisher of Shelf Unbound, recommends Who By Fire as a book club selection. .
Read the interview with Mary.
Literary magazine All the Thunder: for the myth and the mind, Aubrey Sanders, editor-in-chief, Sanders says, "Every once in a rare while a novel emerges from a small press that promises to part the literary tides and challenge the way we think about fiction. Mary Tabor's Who by Fire simply defies genre. It is a story about love that cannot be reduced to a love story, a tragic account of desire and grief that never descends into tragedy."
Small Press ReviewsWho By Fire: Mary L. Tabor offers a beautifully-wrought tale of love, mourning, and betrayal. Read the full review.
Mary W. Walters:"This lyrical reflective novel, images laced with symbolism. ... Robert – the narrator – drops memories like stones into still pools, and then observes the wave rings as they expand and collide, creating new patterns that lead to new collisions. In engineering physics, such collisions are described as 'wave interference' – apt, considering the subject matter of Tabor’s novel." Read the full review.
• “The Fire,” excerpt from completed novel, Chautauqua Literary Journal, review of The Woman Who Never Cooked also appears in this issue.
• “The Fire,” excerpt from novel, second prize for prose, Tall Grass Writers Guild (Lee Martin, judge) and publication in Falling in Love Again, anthology, Outrider Press, (Mary L. Tabor, featured reader at Chicago Book Fair).
• “The Fire,” excerpt nominated for Pushcart Prize XXXI by Joan Connor.
• Semi-finalist, James Jones First Novel Fellowship under former working-title Controlled Burn.
Matthew Long (On Substack where I serialized the novel before Empress Editions found and published it.): This is a poignant novel about love, loss, and forgiveness. Narrated by Robert, a widower reflecting on his late wife Lena's infidelity, the story explores his journey to understand their relationship and come to terms with his grief. Tabor's lyrical prose and symbolic depth create an emotionally rich narrative that examines the complexities of human connection, betrayal, and healing. Its poetic storytelling and nuanced portrayal of relationships make it a compelling exploration of the human condition.