The arsonist - Sue Miller

Fleeing the end of an affair, and troubled by the feeling that she
belongs nowhere after working in East Africa for fifteen years, Frankie
Rowley comes home to the small New Hampshire town of Pomeroy and the
farmhouse where her family has always summered.
On her first night
back, a house up the road burns to the ground. Is it an accident? Over
the weeks that follow, as Frankie comes to recognise her father's slow
failing and her mother's desperation, and she tentatively gets to know
the new owner of the local newspaper, another house burns, and then
another. These frightening events open the deep social fault lines in
the town and raise questions about how and where one ought to live, and
what it really means to lead a fulfilling life.