Prometheus “Methe” Graham, a young black New York City firefighter, is determined to rely on herself and no one else. But the heat is rising: the stresses of her mother’s recent death, her teenage sister’s rebellion, her captain’s doubts, and the disapproval of her Harlem neighbors create an ongoing psychic holocaust that threatens to consume her from within. There are those—like Methe’s next-door neighbor Sophia, who starts out friendly and ends up in bed, or her firehouse buddy Andre, who’s not sure whether his loyalties lie with the job or with those he works beside—that try to penetrate her self-selected isolation. But when the time comes, it seems unlikely that they can spare her the revenge taken by the flames she has fought so hard to conquer.