It is just after Christmas in 1919, and the icy grip of a relentless winter freeze has seized Manhattan. Snowstorm after snowstorm buries the city, and plummeting temperatures freeze the North River solid. With the streets of New York in impassable chaos, most people stay indoors to find what comfort they can inside the walls of their chilled apartments and freezing tenements.

Except one. A solitary, troubled, demon-plagued man who walks the silent streets to burn -- to bring peace to his tortured soul through the ferocious destruction of fire.

It is just after Christmas in 1919, and New York City is besieged by fire and ice.

Thrust into this maelstrom of fire and ice is New York City Fire Marshal Wes Causey. As the members of FDNY battle the weather and the gasoline-fueled flames, Wes sets out in search of a madman.

As New Year's looms the number of fires and their terrible death toll increase -- as does the pressure from the newspapers and city hall. But despite his best efforts, Wes can't find the man setting the horrific fires. The arsonist's trail has become as cold and buried as the city itself.

Wes stalks the cold streets of New York City, hunting a man driven to near madness. From a childhood wracked with abuse, to the tortured voices in his head, the arsonist plunges deeper and deeper into his own fire-plagued mind. A voice pushes him to set fires again and again -- a voice he embraces, the voice of an angel, an archangel known to many as Uriel -- the Fire of God.

Just as he did in The Twelfth Hour, his first Wes Causey novel, Paul Hashagen brings his unique appreciation of New York City's history and his meticulous attention to the details of actual firegrounds to Fire of God, a fast-paced and compelling novel that brings New York City's past into America's present in extremely important ways.