For his first novel, Vancouver poet and short story author Stephen Guppy has set up a fictional town – Danforth, nicknamed “Atomic, U.S.A.” – near Seattle. All of it, from schools to stop signs and libraries to lawns, was created to support a plutonium plant, where most of the adults in the community work making fuel for The Bomb.

Though the plot of the novel is best described as the Cold War coming-of-age tale of Sonny Wheeler, one of Danforth’s youths, The Fire Thief ultimately strives to tell the story of a whole decade – the 1960s. Unfortunately, the stretch ends up spreading the story and characters too thin. Like the contrived town the novel’s set in, Sonny and those closest to him end up feeling like props.

The novel’s larger purpose is to illustrate the turbulent atmosphere created by conflicting political factions existing within the United States at that time. To that end, several of the characters end up in variously convenient circumstances: Karen, with whom Sonny has an on-and-off love affair, becomes an activist with a violent anti-war group; Bobby, Sonny’s blue collar friend, fights in Vietnam; and Clyde, Sonny’s stepfather, continues to work at the plutonium plant. Their behaviours suit their roles a little too snugly, and the dialogue between them serves only to couch the characters in the particular philosophy they represent. As a result, the book’s emotional relationships, such as the love story between Sonny and Karen, are difficult to believe.

The issues addressed by the book – nuclear weapons, the Vietnam war, and the peace movement of the 1960s – are already well mined by historical fiction, and The Fire Thief does not add anything fresh to the dialogue. That said, Guppy also doesn’t have an overt political agenda. All sides are covered fairly, and there’s little moralizing. Though Guppy raises some big questions, he leaves them for readers to answer themselves.