"The ambivalence of fire—as evocation of glowing love and furious destruction—permeates this stunning first novel by Mark Childress, a young Southern writer who gives fresh expression to his region's literary preoccupations. A World Made of Fire is set in rural Alabama in the decades before World War I . . . Childress has created a wholly believable world. The landscapes are forceful and the characters deeply felt... A World Made of Fire probes varieties of tenderness and love, principally from the viewpoint of [a] young girl, Estelle Bates, whose literary forebears include Lena Grove in Faulkner's Light in August...Childress dramatically traces her course, keeping the violent and the tender elements in a tense, remarkably effective balance... Reading it is rather like staring for a good long while into the coals of a fire; in that concentration of energy, many things can be learned." —Newsday