Waiting On Wednesday: The Fireman by Joe Hill

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted at Breaking the Spine where you showcase which books you’re looking forward to being released.

This week I’m looking forward to Joe Hill’s apocalyptic (no surprise there) novel The Fireman.

UK Release date: 7th June 2016

Synopsis: Nobody knew where the virus came from.
FOX News said it had been set loose by ISIS, using spores that had been invented by the Russians in the 1980s.
MSNBC said sources indicated it might’ve been created by engineers at Halliburton and stolen by culty Christian types fixated on the Book of Revelation.
CNN reported both sides.
While every TV station debated the cause, the world burnt.

Pregnant school nurse, HARPER GRAYSON, had seen lots of people burn on TV, but the first person she saw burn for real was in the playground behind the school.
With the epic scope of THE PASSAGE and the emotional impact of THE ROAD, this is one woman’s story of survival at the end of the world.

I stumbled across this book whilst clicking link upon link in the ‘Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought’ section on Amazon. Obviously, the apocalyptic aspect initially caught my eye, but what intrigued me more was the protagonist being pregnant. I’ve always wondered what it must be like for a pregnant woman, or a woman with a newborn, in the apocalypse. If you’re pregnant, you can’t run far or fast and you could pop at any moment. If you have a newborn child, what if silence is imperative for survival? How do you keep a baby quiet? Of course, a man could also find themselves in the latter situation, but the former is a strictly female predicament.

To have a pregnant woman not as a secondary character, but as the protagonist, is unique to me and I’m really excited to see how Hill handles this. I’m also very much excited to learn about this viral outbreak that causes spontaneous combustion. I’ve always been interested in spontaneous combustion ever since I watched the BBC’s adaptation of Dickens’ Bleak House and that drunk man bursts into flames for no apparent reason. Cue me googling ‘spontaneous combustion’ multiple times over the years. However, scientists still have no clue what causes it. How on earth does someone just miraculously catch fire? I’m intrigued to see what Hill does with this notion.

Have you read The Fireman? I know it’s already out in America. What did you think? What books are you looking forward to? Let me know in the comments!