Like all wild, unpredictable things in nature, they seek to tame her, to shackle her down with a husband and children, and breed the fire line out of her. But this story isn’t about breaking and moulding nature - it’s about daring to leap high, and touch the stars and have hope and hunger in your heart, passion and fire in your blood.

Filled with wonderfully rich descriptions of fire in all it’s forms, it’s a subtle and deceptively simply written piece which kindles and then bursts into flaming life as Eliza struggles to return fire to the skies from whence it came. We watch her risk her safety to save the dying fire, and we cheer as she finally embraces those parts of herself which only come alive as she is cloaked in flame - and then loses them as her mission is accomplished. The ending is marvellously bittersweet. We don’t know whether to feel sorry for her for what she has lost; warmth, passion and - of course - the fire inside, or whether to celebrate with her the fact that she experienced much more than most of us ever could, even if only for a moment.

“But though she thrived, though she had all any mortal woman could want, she was never really warm again, not in her most secret places. Each spring, when thunderstorms rumbled across the countryside, she sat out on the split-rail fence, face upturned to the swirling silver-gray clouds, and remembered how a star had once danced inside her heart, how, for a breathtaking second, she too had strode toward the stars on crackling legs of fire."