Chris Rice Cooper
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Watch the FIRE SEASON book trailer by clicking on the link below in blue :
Chris Rice Cooper on
Hollye Dexter’s Memoir Fire Season
“The Mustard Seed of Victory”
came to
the realization that she had been living a depressed and defeated life since
November 18, 1994.
For years
I couldn’t talk about the fire. I couldn’t allow myself to look back at how I
came so close to losing my children. I also didn’t want to remember how I came
so close to losing my mind. But it was a grey cloud following me through life,
never letting me sleep through the night, never letting me go.”
Then the year 2010
came to pass and she found herself in so much despair that she finally confided
in her writer friend Amy Friedman http://www.
amyfriedman.net right who gave
Hollye a sound piece of advice: Hollye’s
only escape and only effective therapy was to write about her deep painful
experiences and memories; and so Hollye Dexter began writing Fire
Season.
“What I learned in the grueling process
of writing and reflecting was that though yes, I was an emotional disaster, I
also fought harder than I ever knew I could to find something to believe in
again. Faith is hard earned and, like a beating heart, is a muscle that must be
worked. I worked to find mine so that my children would not grow up in a
hopeless world.
Instead of
focusing on the loss, I focused on the hope that can be found in the most
disastrous of circumstances — like the kindness of others who came to lift us
back on our feet. Above right. I found, while bankrupt and destitute, we still had our
ability to dream, to love, to create, to hope and to remember. And in writing,
I discovered that though we had lost everything, on a deeper level we really
hadn’t lost anything. These are the jewels we unearth when excavating our
complicated histories.”
“I
wrote while my youngest was in school. I
was very disciplined about it.”
And discipline in writing was something Hollye practiced since
she was a little girl: “I’ve kept a diary since I was in the second
grade.”
In 2013 Fire
Season was completed and the next step was the publishing process,
which proved to be almost as arduous as writing the book itself.
“In the
three years it took me to write the first draft of Fire Season, the publishing industry had completely changed. So I
sat on the book, and hemmed and hawed for over a year, deciding what direction
to take. I attended conferences, lectures, read books about it, asked the
counsel of my friends. I did send it out to about a dozen or so agents and
publishers and though I got good feedback and had a good track record with my
first book Dancing At the Shame Prom
with Seal Press, I kept getting the response that they just couldn't take the
financial risk with an “unknown” memoirist.
Because my
stories are the only thing of true value that I own, I decided I had to move
forward in a way that felt right to me, and that meant having more control over
this book’s destiny. Time and again, friends had recommended Brooke Warner’s http://brookewarner.com above right new hybrid publishing option, She Writes
Press, and because I have deep respect for and trust in Brooke after publishing
Dancing At the Shame Prom with her
at Seal, I finally committed. She Writes gave me all the perks of traditional
publishing, but more creative and financial control.”
On October 14, 2015 She
Write Press http://shewritespress.com published the memoir Fire
Season My Journey From Ruin to Redemption written by Hollye Dexter http://hollyedexter.blogspot.com with jacket cover art
by Stacey Aaronson https://www.facebook.com/stacey.aaronson.7.
Hollye Dexter is on her second marriage with the
love of her life Troy Dexter. At the
time the couple shares two children – Cissy, age 8, Hollye’s daughter from her
first marriage, and their son Taylor, age 4.
Hollye and Troy each have their own business
they are passionate about: Hollye owns
her own child clothing business out of her home and Troy http://www.
music.com is a successful Los
Angeles based musician. Along with their
variety of pets, the family of four are happy and joyful in their beloved
rented home partially situation in a Los Angeles cliff. Above right Troy and Hollye a few weeks before the fire.
shadowing in Hollye’s soul – she doesn’t know why she is feeling this or
where it’s coming from so she pushes it aside.
She drops her daughter Cissy off at her biological father’s house for
the weekend and then heads back home. The foreshadowing continues and in the middle of
the night she senses a voice telling her to go check on the baby; and gets up
from her own bed and lays in bed with her four year old son Taylor. She awakens to her Troy’s panicked voice and
to the blazes of fire.
A guttural, instinctual wailing fills the
air – a voice I’ve never heard before.
It’s my voice.
Fire behind me, a thirty-foot drop to
concrete below.
Troy shouts from our bedroom window, “Hold on!
I’m coming – I’m gonna jump.”
Following his words is the loud thwack of his body, the sickening sound
of bones against cement. I scream his
name over and over but he doesn’t respond.
I start to cry but there is no time for panic.
Taylor and I hang out the window,
engulfed in smoke, suffocating. I lower
him as far as my arms will stretch so he can breathe. I hold only his tiny hands, his body dangling
midair. I am in the center of the
firestorm. Above right a thank you card Taylor wrote to his mom Hollye.
“My
husband, wearing thigh-high fishing boots, dug through piles of rubble
four-feet deep and pulled out small blackened squares. They looked like
charcoal briquets, but they turned out to be my childhood diaries – one of them
used to have a Holly Hobbie cover and a little gold key attached.”
Other
mementoes are discovered which gives Troy and Hollye reason to feel hopeful. There, in vivid color, is a photo of me and Troy on
our wedding day. The edges are singed,
the colors running together. Like us,
our wedding album is damaged, but it survived.
I smile and wrap my arms around him happy tears in my eyes. Of all the things to be saved from the
ashes. Is this a random
coincidence? I take it as a sign.
Soon Hollye realizes it is more than just one
fire but many fires that traumatized her throughout her life. The physical fire that November night was
just the tip of the ice burg. And the
ice burg is massive in titanic proportions.
Hollye has to deal with the traumatic
events in her childhood concerning her mother, her suicidal brother, the
disturbing truth about her father whom she was led to believe was dead,
incidences of violence that happened to her as a child and that she witnessed
as a child, and the rejection from Troy’s family. The two pictures above are of Hollye and Troy inside their burnt home. December of 1994
Hollye goes through intense PTSD about all
the fires in her life that results in flashbacks, intense weeping, nightmares,
insomnia, depression, suicidal thoughts, a sense of helplessness and
hopelessness. 
I tried to throw myself from the car today. I didn’t care anymore what happened to
me. I wanted to hurt myself. Troy grabbed me by the hair and yanked me back. I lost a lot of hair, but now I see how
drastic a situation this is. I called
the psychologist who helped me after the fire.
I am going to see him tomorrow.
The fires of not knowing who to trust, of
deep depression, of emotional hurts within Troy and Hollye continue to grow
stronger making the PTSD incidences almost intolerable. Hollye begins to question the existence of
God and why all of these bad things are happening to their family.
I pace the house for hours like the night watchman,
my anxiety never letting me rest. I lie
awake thinking about our dogs and cats – trying to remember how their fur felt
the last time they slept with me in bed.
I wonder if I made the right decision in letting my business go. I pray that if I dare fall asleep, God will
protect my children. But I don’t trust
God. Above right is an image Taylor drew about the fire; and Taylor himself in December of 1994.
Troy and Taylor sit in camping chairs on our back
lawn our tent behind them, sleeping bags rolled out on the grass. Taylor is roasting marshmallows over the
hibachi. Troy plucks at his acoustic
guitar. Peering through that window, I
marvel at how Troy is able to turn this disaster into a tiny miracle, and my heart
swells with love for him. 
I wander into a wide-open field, with yellow
mustard flowers growing waist high. At
the center of it I plunk down, where no one can see or hear me, and I wail with
grief. . . .
I feel all the color drain from my face
and from my life as I come to the realization that my marriage is failing. Since I’m already on my knees, with nothing
else to lose, I pray . .
.
Fire Season is more than a memoir about
the Dexter home being destroyed by fire, Holly overcoming her PTSD, but it is
also a memoir about the power of love so strong it conquered all. And remains victorious. Right Hollye and Troy with their son Taylor (middle) and son Evan bottom left and their daughter Cissy bottom right. 
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