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by Mary L. Tabor (Author)
A gem for readers of Joan Didion, Marilynne Robinson, and Rachel Cusk, Who By Fire is a haunting literary novel about love, betrayal, and the stories we tell ourselves when everything we believed begins to burn.
Intimate, unsparing, and quietly explosive, Who By Fire is a novel of marriage, desire, and loss that lingers long after the final page.
Robert believes he understands his life.
He has built it carefully--marriage, work, routine, a world governed by logic and control. But when his wife Lena begins to slip beyond his reach, drawn into a relationship he cannot fully see or name, that structure begins to fracture.
As Lena moves between two men--and toward a future neither of them can stop--Robert is left to reconstruct the story of their marriage from the inside out. What did he miss? What did he refuse to see? And what, exactly, was lost... before anything was ever broken?
Set against the quiet rhythms of Washington, DC, and the remembered landscapes of the Midwest, Who By Fire unfolds as a meditation on desire, betrayal, illness, and the limits of understanding. Through memory, music, and the recurring image of fire--controlled, destructive, inevitable--the novel traces the fragile line between holding on and letting go.
As Lena's fate draws closer, the question is no longer who is to blame... but whether love, once altered, can ever be restored--or only survived.
Spare, lyrical, and deeply affecting, Who By Fire is a novel about the stories we construct to make sense of our lives--and what remains when those stories collapse.
Author Biography
Mary L. Tabor is an award-winning writer known for her lyrical prose and emotional precision. Working across fiction, memoir, and personal essay, she explores women's lives, memory, and reinvention--often in the charged spaces between love and loss, silence and revelation.
A late-blooming literary voice, Tabor published her debut story collection, The Woman Who Never Cooked, to critical acclaim following a distinguished career in journalism, corporate communications, and motherhood. Her book, (Re)Making Love: A Memoir, was praised for its candor and elegance, tracing a midlife transformation with uncommon clarity and insight.
Her novel Who By Fire, now reissued by Empress Editions, is widely regarded as her most ambitious work. Lauded by Pulitzer Prize-winning writers and critics alike, it demonstrates her gift for layered narrative and emotional depth. Pulitzer Prize finalist Lee Martin has called it "a lyric meditation on love and desire," while International Herald Tribune critic Michael Johnson wrote that it "ranks her alongside the finest novelists working today."
Tabor holds an MFA from The Ohio State University, where she taught creative writing and received the university's Distinguished Teaching Award (Fellowship Award). Her work has appeared in leading literary journals, including The Missouri Review, The Sun, Narrative Magazine, Catapult, Hayden's Ferry Review, Catamaran, and Short Édition, among others. She has also been a frequent guest on NPR affiliates and literary podcasts, speaking about writing, reinvention, and the female voice in midlife.
She lives and writes in Washington, DC, and Los Angeles. In addition to her writing and teaching, Tabor collaborates with Empress Editions on bespoke reader experiences and literary media that extend the life of a story beyond the page.
