Bride of the Fire

Story Overview

Northern Wisconsin's forests are on fire – and drawing ever closer to Kat's lodge.  Across her lake she spots cabins burning and races to help.  She arrives to find a woman in a wedding gown seated in a cabin already ablaze.  "Let it burn" the woman says, then walks off into the forest.

Within a day, Kat discovers the fire is only one of the problems she faces.  The bride appears at her lodge with stories of marijuana growers and Russians and a Cold War antenna.  She wants Kat's help and seeks her love.  Kat agrees to a quick trip to Republic, Michigan, home to one end of the hundred-mile antenna extending through national forests in Wisconsin and Michigan. 

Their questions raise the suspicions of a local guard who threatens Kat with arrest unless she agrees to help locate Russian agents.  Her relations with him quickly become romantic.  She moves in with him as she searches.  She also becomes part of an odd community of women left behind when the local mines closed.  Descendants of Finnish immigrants escaping Russian attacks during the Second World War, they have become a local tribe – a tribe dedicated to hatred of all things Russian.

Kat meets a Russian woman who wants access to the antenna.  The woman seduces, then captures, Kat and makes her part of a plot to send nuclear launch codes over the antenna.  Kat is rescued by the local women, only to discover the women have their own plans for the antenna.

Throughout, Kat and Taylor have a mystery to solve and choices to make - who to trust and who to love.  Wrong choices could result in nuclear war.