When a shocking death rocks the exclusive writing program at a prestigious campus, a student journalist, Tess Azar, sets out to discover the truth. Rumors abound of the writing program’s cultish atmosphere and its zealous members, who will stop at nothing to ensure the sanctity of their own secrets. As an extreme right-wing student group swells in numbers, Tess finds herself in the crosshairs, dangerously at the center of the growing chaos. Simmering with tension, this provocative novel portrays the nation’s current charged political climate, highlighting the immovable structures of our society and the dangers of navigating a post-truth world.
Praise for A Campus on Fire
"Patrick O’Dowd’s vigorous debut is a prescient and perceptive tale, a compelling examination of a world in which fact and fiction have become blurred and weaponized. The novel portrays a deeply divided college campus rife with clashing ideologies, power imbalances and misguided passions. Would you lie to see your version of the truth win the day? And how far would you go in the pursuit of a dream? A Campus on Fire asks the best kind of uncomfortable questions."
—Christopher J. Yates, author of Black Chalk and Grist Mill Road
"This vivid debut wrestles with essential questions about the role of personal ambition in the fight for social change. Blending richly drawn characters with timely themes, O’Dowd has written a novel about and for our tumultuous era."
—Wil Medearis, author of Restoration Heights
"Patrick O’Dowd’s A Campus on Fire is timely, urgent, and thrilling. Set at a campus uncomfortably close to all of us, the novel adroitly mixes a quasi-fascist student faction, a cult-like writers’ group, a love story, and a student reporter trying to maintain objectivity in the face of crisis. O’Dowd works with complex characters and presents no easy resolutions—like life itself.
—David Galef, author of How to Cope with Suburban Stress
“Patrick O’Dowd has gifted readers a phenomenal debut using a university campus setting as a microcosm of our national politics and the epicenter of clashing ideas around consent, class, gender, race, and privilege. The story’s journalistic lens through its protagonist Tess cleverly allows for varying angles of storytelling, while the interpersonal connective tissue of the plot is utterly irresistible. At the heart of this novel is the concept of power: who has it, who wants it, and the extremes that people will go to to get it. With A Campus on Fire, O’Dowd has cemented himself as a forceful new literary voice.”
—Kerri Schlottman, author of Tell Me One Thing
