Robert Wells recounts the tragedy with admirable completeness. He sets the tinderbox-dry scene - high temperatures, low humidity, a drought and an already smoldering countryside. But the folks around Peshtigo were no innocents, they were hardy backcountry types who knew how to fight and survive forest fires. What these people were confronted with, however, was a conflagration straight out of the book of Revelation. Described time and again as a fire tornado - flames, raining hot ash, and deadly heat raced across the forestland faster than a man could run. Wells collects the survivor's stories and pieces together accounts of the less lucky. Many are quite ghastly, involving split second errors in judgment with ultimate consequences. Many survived, but many others were reduced to unrecognizable remains.