ON FIRE by Larry Brown (Warner:...

ON FIRE by Larry Brown (Warner: $11.99; 182 pp.). The author of “Joe” worked as a fire-fighter in Oxford, Miss., while he honed his skills as a writer: “This book is an attempt to explore what I felt about my years in the fire service and what it was like to live through those years, and the way two totally different careers had to mesh and make room for each other, until one of them finished first.” In deceptively plain-spoken prose, Brown contrasts his experiences fighting fires and aiding accident victims with reflections on daily life in the Deep South. His accounts of picnics and parenting, hunting and fishing, the births of his children and the death of a beloved dog sound like confidences recounted over a beer on a sweaty afternoon.