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| Plot Summary of The Smoke House |
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"Jason Gum, who goes by the nickname "Gum" or "Juicy Fruit" is a Seattle firefighter assigned to Engine 29. At the outset of the story, he misses a call to a fire because he's having sex in the firehouse basement with an older woman, Iola Pederan. Belatedly, he rushes in his own car to the fire where he is able to join his crew, who covered for his absence. Gum rescues a woman from the fire and then dashes in to get a man who is pronounced dead at the scene from smoke inhalation. Gum is touted as a hero. But the firefighter is burdened with guilt. He knows that if he had ridden the rig to the fire, the few minutes difference in timing might have saved the man's life.
Gum has to deal with living with the lie and his guilt. He isn't a hero. He was derelict in his duty. While Gum wants to confess the truth to his lieutenant, which will get him fired, Gum's need to remain a firefighter is stronger. He stays silent.
It seems that Gum's crew mates Ted Tronstad and Robert Johnson are covering for the younger firefighter because Tronstad had found several bags of "bearer bonds" while searching the burning house. Tronstad took them out of the house and stashed them in Gum's car, the one the young firefighter had driven to the scene because he'd missed riding on the rig. Gum is now a kind of accomplice to Tronstad's theft. If Gum reports that the bonds are in his car, it obviously shows that he didn't go in the rig to the fire. Gum hides the booty from Tronstad, while he tries to figure out what to do.
Tronstad, however, is determined to go to any length, including murder, to get the bonds back. "
Patricia Harrington, Resident Scholar
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| Review Analysis of The Smoke House |
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Our unique search engine provides a wealth of detail about books by breaking them down into many different literary elements, all of which are searchable (click here).
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Ratings are on a 1-10 scale (Low to High)
Plot
Time/era of story
- 1980's-1999
Life of a profession:
- fireman
Internal struggle/realization?
Yes
Struggle over
- actions leading to death of someone
Crime & Police story
Yes
Story of
- conman stealing/fraud
Job/Profession/Status story
Yes
Main Character
Gender
- Male
Age:
- 20's-30's
Is this an ordinary person caught up in events?
Yes
Ethnicity/Nationality
- White (American)
How sensitive is this character?
- middling sensitive to others' feelings
Sense of humor
- Cynical sense of humor
Intelligence
- Average intelligence
Physique
- average physique
Main Adversary
How much of work is main antagonist actually present in:
- throughout most of the book.
How sensitive is this character?
- mean, arrogant
Intelligence
- Average intelligence
Setting
How much descriptions of surroundings?
- 5 (an average amount)
United States
Yes
City?
Yes
Style
Person
- mostly 1st
Accounts of torture and death?
- moderately detailed references to deaths
Sex in book?
Yes
What kind of sex:
- touching of anatomy
- actual description of hetero sex
- descript. of female anat. (the big B's)
Lot of foul language?
Yes
Amount of dialog
- roughly even amounts of descript and dialog
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Click here for more information about this book
Note: the views expressed here are only those of the reviewer(s). | |
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