A review by missamandamae
Tinderbox: The Untold Story of the Up Stairs Lounge Fire and the Rise of Gay Liberation by Robert W. Fieseler

4.0

This was an incident I hadn’t heard of until the Pulse shooting and death counts were compared. This was definitely another level of horrific- 32 people burned in a bar on a casual Sunday night. The police never apprehended the perpetrator. People made crass jokes about the victims. Some bodies were burned so badly they were never identified. Families of some of the victims were reluctant to come forward because they didn’t want anyone to know they had a gay son. And to make it just a little extra worse, many of them were members of a church community hanging out after services.

At times it was a little difficult to keep track of all the people involved, but overall I was drawn in and wanted to know about the victims and survivors and what happened in New Orleans in 1973.