The Big Burn - Mike Mccormick

Smoke Gets in Your Eyes meets The Rosie Project in this sly, big-hearted romantic comedy about bonfires, Christians, death, grief, and the awkward miracles of falling in love. At Big Burn Funeral Services, program manager Ray Wells spends his days balancing the practical and the profound. He handles ashes and paperwork, comforts families in shock, and somehow keeps a rural funeral campground running on time. After years of hard living and harder regrets, Ray is learning to stay steady: to tend the flames, not throw himself into them. Then Bonnie Betts walks into his life: a Vegas-born Jesus girl with more conviction than caution, an infectious laugh, and eyes that dare him to believe in grace again. She's come east chasing peace and a little forgiveness. Ray's rulebook: no romance, no risk, no repeat mistakes, doesn't stand a chance. Between midnight swims and quiet prayers, Bonnie becomes both muse and mirror, showing him what he's been afraid to face: that faith and desire aren't opposites but different ways of reaching for light. Around them, the Big Burn community swirls with humanity at its rawest: families fractured by loss, a grieving veteran who refuses pity, a sister caught between devotion and rebellion, and church folk who bring covered dishes and judgment in equal measure. The result is dark humor with a beating heart, where tears and laughter mingle and no one leaves untouched. As the summer burns on, Ray and Bonnie must decide what survives when everything else is reduced to ash: habit or hope, guilt or forgiveness, safety or love. In the glow of a fire where endings become beginnings, they discover that redemption isn't a miracle granted once, but a practice lived every day. The Big Burn is a sharp, funny, and deeply human story that treats faith with respect and curiosity, not sermons; that explores sin and longing without shame; and that finds beauty in the rituals of death and grief. It's for readers who like their small-town stories smoky and sincere, their romances tangled with real-life stakes, and their endings warm enough to carry them past the last page. You'll love this book if you enjoy: - Small-town workplace romances with moral tension and messy grace - Conservative Christian culture seen from the inside: honest, wry, and tender - A quirky setting in which death, grief, sex, and humor coexist without undercutting one another - A redeemed bad-boy hero and a heroine whose faith is both compass and spark A sexy, funny, and he