Fires in the Night

‘Cinematic, suspenseful, totally immersive’ ZOË SCHLANGER

‘Explosive … fascinating’ RENI EDDO-LODGE

‘Riveting’ ERIC KLINENBERG

The explosive true story of a secret group of radicals who launched a clandestine battle to save the planet, and what their legacy illuminates about the future of our climate crisis.

In the early hours of October 28, 1996, a driver in rural Oregon spotted flames rising from a federal ranger station. Firefighters quickly extinguished the blaze, but not before discovering a cryptic phrase spray-painted nearby: “EARTH LIBERATION FRONT.” Over the next decade, the Earth Liberation Front would carry out the most audacious politically motivated arsons in US history. Targeting car dealerships, lumber companies, and a $20 million ski resort, they wanted to send a message: if the government wouldn’t halt the destruction of the natural world, they would. Despite causing no deaths, the ELF was branded the nation’s foremost domestic terrorism threat and became the target of one of the FBI’s largest ever investigations.

Fires in the Night is the definitive story of the ELF’s rise and unravelling. For years, members of ELF, many of them close friends, led double lives, meticulously planning and staging their attacks while trying to manage personal frictions and stay one step ahead of the government. Drawing on years of original reporting and interviews, including with reclusive activists breaking their silence for the first time, journalist Matthew Wolfe offers a thrilling, intimate account of a moment when the actions of radical environmentalists challenged mainstream complacency.

As the climate crisis continues to accelerate, Wolfe asks the most pressing question of our time: facing the end of the world as we know it, exactly what kind of resistance is justified?

‘At once a cinematically propulsive narrative, a herculean feat of reporting and a sweeping work of modern environmental history’ ROBERT MOOR, author of On Trails

‘A brilliant meditation on how a social movement draws its own moral lines’ ERIC KLINENBERG, author of Palaces for the People

‘Masterful reporting. As riveting as any thriller’ SETH HARP, author of The Fort Bragg Cartel