What are we without our possessions? How do we continue when the foundations of our lives are rocked? Lifestorm begins when an upper middle class couple, Amanda and Jeffrey Dunn, return from a Hawaiian vacation to find their Hiller Highlands home destroyed in the Oakland Hills Firestorm of 1991. The loss of their possessions is only the beginning of their troubles.

The couple deal with the tragedy differently. Amanda, initially frozen with panic, decides she is more than the things she once owned. Caught up in the rebuilding effort, dealing with her mother’s serious injuries, she finds little time for the job that once defined her. Jeff becomes mired in anger, looking for someone to blame. He finds satisfaction in rallying other victims in fruitless suits against the City of Oakland and wars against the red tape of rebuilding.

Amanda loses her mother, then finds no support from her best friend, Elaine. New friends, Pamela Macklin, a handicapped artist, and Ramona Prentiss, CPA, help her to choose a new life road. Jeff’s twenty-something daughter, Leslie, tries and fails to split up the couple, but the friction caused by Amanda’s willingness to change and Jeff’s anger and inability to move on accomplishes what Leslie’s hostility never could. The struggles of friends and family to cope with their own feelings of loss and dislocation form a backdrop for the couple’s strife.

Denise P. Kalm has been writing since 1990, specializing in political commentary. Her work appears regularly in San Francisco Bay Area newspapers and political magazines. Travel writing, scuba diving, and genre fiction are other areas of interest. Ms. Kalm has regular columns in New Horizons and Libertarian Lifeline and has been published in "Discover Diving" and "Cruise Travel." Her short horror fiction has been published in the small press and tales of computer people ‘on the edge’ have appeared in national magazines such as "Moxie."

When her mother and many friends lost their homes in the ‘91 Oakland Firestorm, Ms. Kalm was inspired to write about the tragedy. Through research and interviews, she developed a novel based on the changes people make when they experience major losses in their lives. Though a work of fiction, "LIFESTORM" draws heavily from real-life reactions and events in this disaster.

"LIFESTORM is Ms. Kalm’s first novel. Based on her studies in biochemical genetics, a biomedical technothriller, "EXECUTIVE PRIVILEGE," is in the works, as is "TWISTING IN THE WIND," a collection of horror stories. Ms. Kalm resides in Walnut Creek, California, with her pet rabbit and PC.

Neil’s car sped downhill out of the tunnel into a wall of black smoke. He hit the brakes hard and the car slewed sideways, crossing several lanes before he regained control. Headlights glared, spilling their light into the ashes. Cars jolted over the dirt from the access roads, crossing in front of him, trying to escape the fire that raged down the hillside. Tires squealed, horns honked frantically, sounds emerging out of nowhere. Narrowly avoiding the cross traffic, Neil edged to the shoulder and parked. He forced himself to take long, deep breaths, willing his hands to stop shaking.

His line of sight was blocked by the large "Parkwoods Apartments" sign and the heavy, gray cement blocks fronting on the freeway. Oh, God! Mary! His best friend and confidante since college lived in one of those units. The only one who really knew who he was, who he wanted to be. Neil tried to imagine how his friend would escape. In a wheelchair, she couldn’t manage alone. Who would help her? He had to get inside.

It had to be bad at Parkwoods; most of the cars he’d narrowly missed hitting had come from Caldecott Lane, next to the guard station. Mary’s building was set midway into the cleft of the hill - she could be trapped. As he ran into the apartment complex, the buildings to the back were obscured by the smoke - no chance for any of them, he thought.

His throat ached at the harsh tang of the oxygen-starved smoke, and he was barely able to see. He tried to remember what he had learned years before, as a medic in Viet Nam. He had saved men from worse situations than this. Fighting his way through a tide of people, Neil paused to dip his handkerchief in a pond next to the first building and pressed it to his lips. It helped, a little. Squinting, he tried to assess the situation.

The fire swept down from the hills, working its way to the buildings in the center of the complex. He could barely see Mary’s building. Whispering a silent prayer for her safety, he counted fire trucks - too few. Parkwoods had no chance.