FIRE IN WINTER is a quartet of novels written in the classic tradition of Greek Tragedy; it is the story of a flawed man fighting against his fate. It is a study of the human spirit confronting and transcending the human condition. COPPER MEADOW, the first of the FIRE IN WINTER quartet, tells the story of a small group of professors and students at a college in Northern California around the time of World War One. Through the frame of Sunday parties in the garden of one of the professors the story of their different lives unfolds. With their entire belief in western civilization challenged by the slaughter of the World War, and the death of several in their own group, a handful take part in the request of the dying George Paley to travel to a semi-mythical place in the Southwestern desert called The Copper Meadow. Each, in their own way, seek answers to the void they feel in their hearts. Throughout the entire FIRE IN WINTER quartet the real-time plot is very simple and conforms to the classic unities of time, place and action. The work invokes a central place, similar to a Monterey of Steinbeck or a Yoknapatawpha of Faulkner, however a intricate arabesque of interconnected stories and multilevel subplots weaving around the main plotline gives the novels great depth and a developing momentum. This novel has wide appeal. Being a complex literary novel in the tradition of a Dante or a James Joyce, it is also a simply told story: the prose and story will entertain all types of readers.