(MONTCLAIR, NJ) -- New Jersey native Patrick O'Dowd's A Campus on Fire will be released by Regal House Publishing on April 29, 2025. The author grew up in Cranford and lives in Montclair.  The Montclair State University alum's debut novel is loosely based on his campus experience.
EA Campus on Fireshocking death of a student -- slowly gets drawn into the cult-like, insular writing program that he had been a part of. But as Tess begins to fall for the mysterious and alluring Rose, another member of the program, she finds herself drawn into their tight-knit community. As an extreme right-wing student group swells in numbers, threatening Tess's journalist credibility, she finds herself in the crosshairs, dangerously at the center of the growing chaos.Â
The backdrop of the novel expertly portrays the nation’s current charged political climate and the dangers of navigating a post-truth world. Christopher J. Yates (author of Black Chalk, Grist Mill Road) calls it: "The novel portrays a deeply divided college campus rife with clashing ideologies, power imbalances and misguided passions.... A Campus on Fire asks the best kind of uncomfortable questions."
"O'Dowd's debut is a stunner, with a devastating ending," said Library Journal.
The book will be available on April 29, 2025. The paperback has 264 pages and retails for $19.95. An Epub/Mobipocket version costs $9.95. Look for it at your favorite online bookstore. The book's ISBN # is 9781646035298.
"I began work on A Campus on Fire in the aftermath of two events," the author explained on the publisher's website. "One was the January 6th capital riots, which left me staring, speechless, at my television. The other, a story about my alma mater, Montclair State University, and a situation they were dealing with regarding bigoted, far-right protestors clashing with students. I was struck, not for the first time, by the radicalization that pervades this nation. I wanted to write about post-truth and found that a campus was an ideal place for that discussion. From those events and my desperate need to tell stories, a novel was born."
"Patrick O'Dowd has gifted readers a phenomenal debut using a university campus setting as a microcosm of our national politics and the epicenter of clashing ideas around consent, class, gender, race, and privilege.  The story's journalistic lens through its protagonist Tess cleverly allows for varying angles of storytelling, while the interpersonal connective tissue of the plot is utterly irresistable.  At the heart of this novel is the concept of power: who has it, who wants it, and the extremes that people will go to get it. With A Campus on Fire, O'Dowd has cemented himself as a forceful new literary voice," said Kerri Schlottman, author of Tell me One Thing.
Patrick O'Dowd's work has appeared in a variety of publications, including Quagmire Literary Magazine, The Write Launch, and Sequoia Speaks, where he currently serves as fiction editor. Born and raised in New Jersey, he studied at Montclair State University, where he met his partner, Cassie. A Campus on Fire is his debut novel.
On his website O'Dowd says he is currently working a new novel - a historical fiction about Elvis Presley when, for his military service, he was stationed in Germany.
