We Are Like Fire

The first 6 comments on my new novel

A timely, fascinating, and critically relevant read, We Are Like Fire is an especially and unreservedly recommended pick for community and college / university library Historical Fiction collections. 

— Midwest Book Review

We Are Like Fire is a poignant novel that helps us understand how the Third Reich and the Holocaust occurred.  Primo Levi and Elie Wiesel are interacted with in a fascinating way. Weber’s novel alerts us to the lurking dangers of authoritarianism and Fascism in our own time and in the future.

— Nancy Glenn Hansen, Washington D.C.

As both an evocative portal into 1950s America and a long-awaited celebration of the feloniously ignored bard Friedrich Hölderlin, We Are Like Fire reminds us denizens of an end-of-history quagmire that no period of history is insignificant. Mike Goodenow Weber captures historical essences and continuities with an apothecary's wisdom; we do not merely glimpse history, we breathe it in our lungs.

— Felix Purat, Poland

The characters are very relatable and the central characters aspire to a high moral code. They examine human frailty and how it can lead to unimaginable evil whilst they attempt to bring some reconciliation and enlightenment to a world fairly recently ravaged by war. The optimism exuded by members of the central family and their attempt to foster hope and decency in their children is uplifting, but the author does not shy away from grappling with difficult philosophical and moral themes, and there are some shocking elements to the story. A good read.

— Julia Pickering, England

This book is a tour de force on psychology and culture in the wake of WWII. It's a unique and super-smart discussion of competing schools of psychology, and which is more likely to help create a more loving world, especially after the horrors of the Holocaust. I have personal roots and ancestry in the American West and Germany, so I loved that the book is set both in the West (Denver) and in Germany. I'm not aware of any other work of historical fiction that shines a light like this book does on psychology, culture, and some of the WWII generation's most challenging questions. Who wouldn't want friends like Ren and Dieter, willing to engage in lively discussion on music, literature, and philosophy? The book is an intriguing and accessible summary of some very serious intellectual ideas.

— B. Cook, California

Mike Goodenow Weber’s We Are Like Fire is the most unusual novel you will read this year. In this fascinating combination of post-WWII, Holocaust-haunted history (replete with brief and affecting appearances by some of its most famous survivors), the mid-century evolution in psychology, and the uneasy postwar conscience of Germans at home and abroad, Germans and Americans band together for a remarkable creative purpose. Intending to foster reconciliation and insight on both sides, therapist and playwright Ren Prothero spins the tragic story of the German poet Friedrich Holderlin into an affecting, even transformative play – rendered almost in full in the book. The play is highlighted by the performance of a self-seeking German, Dieter Ulrich, as the title character. And as it culminates with performances in Germany, the protagonists bask in its success – only to find that the tentacles of the past are not quite so easily shaken off.

As intently philosophical and intellectual as anything by Aldous Huxley or Ayn Rand, yet warm and human in tone, We Are Like Fire can really be compared only to its predecessor novel, Renaissance Radio, which introduced readers to Prothero’s father, his extended family and several giants of psychology in the service of a story set 30 years earlier. Though Weber pauses to count the cost of all that breaks along the way in We Are Like Fire, just as he did in its predecessor, this unique narrative is leavened with spirit and ultimately a tale of optimism about the human trajectory.

— Eric F., California

We Are Like Fire on Amazon