Pyromaniac (A Memoir)

“When I was eighteen, I burned down a church. I don't know why.”

An extraordinarily powerful and confessional account of clinical pyromania and humanity’s relationship to fire

When Rio Matchett was eighteen years old, she set fire to a church. She was incarcerated for the crime, but the question remained, what compelled her to set the fire?

In this gripping account, Matchett sets out to understand the origins of her clinical pyromania, a condition that is little-understood. Reaching beyond simple medical explanations for her compulsion, Matchett turns to legend, religion, literature, and history—from the myths of Prometheus and Pandora to the trope of the madwoman in novels by Charlotte Brontë and Jean Rhys—in the search of answers for why humanity’s fascination with fire is both so pervasive and so potentially catastrophic.

At the core of this exploration, Matchett confronts a deeply personal mystery, probing her past for clues. When did the desire to burn first present itself?  And how did it become so all-consuming? As she begins to unfurl what might have sparked such a seemingly senseless act of destruction, she unexpectedly finds that hope and redemption might also exist amongst the embers.

Combining critical inquiry with a page-turning journey of self-discovery, Pyromaniac asks what our relationship with fire can tell us about each other and ourselves—and how we might find meaning in an apparently senseless world. The result is a fierce, intimate, and radiantly insightful work—one that spans eras, continents, and cultures in order to understand what it is that has always drawn us toward the flame.