The obituary of Simon L. “Lucky” Varner — husband, father, grandfather — lauded everything the man had been: World War II veteran, business owner, a member of the Lions Club, Elks, Disabled American Veterans, Fraternal Order of Police, school board, Presbyterian Church and Men’s Sunday School class.

But it left out what everyone in his hometown of McVeytown, Pa., knew about him but never discussed.

“Lucky” Varner, father of Denton Varner, McVeytown’s fire chief, was a serial arsonist.

Nor did the obituary reveal the lifelong secret father and son kept hidden from Jay Varner, the firestarter’s grandson and the firefighter’s son, the secret Varner’s mother reluctantly revealed to him as an adult that helped him finally come to terms with the complex relationship he had with both men.

On Thursday, Oct. 14, at 4 p.m. at The Country Bookshop in Southern Pines, Jay Varner will share “Nothing Left to Burn,” his affecting memoir of growing up in a family bound together by fire, obsession, guilt, secrets and lies.

“Without reservation, I think Jay’s memoir is as good as Jeannette Walls’ ‘The Glass Castle’ and Rick Bragg’s ‘All Over But The Shoutin’,” says Bonnie Johnson, manager of The Country Bookshop. “His story of a fire chief father, an arsonist grandfather and the boy in the middle trying to figure everything out will appeal to everyone.”

“It’s about fathers and sons, and it’s about the search for redemption and meaning — and that’s universal,” Varner says. “I think there are people in here that every reader can love or hate. It’s certainly not just about the men — I think the female characters are incredibly strong. I hope people can see the oddball absurdity of some of the characters and happenings as well.”

Like his father and grandfather, Jay Varner grew up outside of the small rural community of McVeytown, located between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. He, his mother, Teena, and his father lived in a trailer on property Lucky owned but refused to sell to his son. The trailer sat in the middle of a triangle of the burned ruins of three buildings destroyed after Lucky set them on fire.

Lucky began his “career” as a serial arsonist in the mid-1960s when he set his new Studebaker on fire. Then a garden shed in McVeytown mysteriously erupted into flames. For his first really big fire, Lucky burned his workshop to the ground when Denton was 9 or 10. Then he burned down his own house.

“I remember losing all my toys,” Denton told 7-year-old Jay about the “accident.” “All the photos burned up too. I didn’t even have any pictures of me when I was your age.”

A few years later, Lucky burned their second home to the ground and was found guilty of insurance fraud and arson. He was sentenced to five years in prison. Encouraged by his mother to redeem her husband’s reputation, Denton became a junior fireman, and after graduating from high school, immersed himself in the life of a volunteer fireman, eventually becoming McVeytown’s fire chief.

He married Teena in 1979, and Jay, their only child, was born two years later.

“His priorities had always been clear,” Varner says. “The fire department came first; everything else was second. The firehouse was my dad’s excuse to miss dinner, skip out on my elementary school’s open houses, and break plans to play baseball or take me fishing. For all the talents that my father had — telling jokes, giving advice on everything from repairing engines to building a house, and fighting fires — he was best at leaving.”

In 1988, Denton Varner was diagnosed with multiple myeloma. He died in 1990 at the age of 31. Jay was 8.

After his son’s death, Lucky continued doing what he had done all of his grandson’s life. He set fires. Every Saturday, the man who Varner said “always set off a surge of fear in my chest,” would bring trash or a truckload of old mattresses to “the hole” five feet from the porch of the trailer where Varner and his mother continued to live.

“I don’t remember ever feeling so terrified,” Varner recalls. “The fire was so intense, we could feel the heat on the handle of the front door, yet my grandfather just stood right next to his creation and watched. He cocked his head like a dog, listening intently, as though the crackle and pop of the flames sounded like a melody to him.

“It’s hard for me to call my grandfather simply bad,” Varner now admits. “He was a true pyromaniac. He may have well been a sociopath too. To me, it was a sickness, not a badness. He simply loved fire. But a fire starter’s greatest joy is the response — they are drawn to firefighters and fire stations. A pyromaniac is gratified by the orchestrated chaos of screaming fire trucks, of men dressed in turn-out gear dashing about and dragging hoses over their shoulders, of the people who extinguish their beautiful living, breathing, flaming creation.”

When Lucky died in 2000, his friends were asked to make memorial contributions to the McVeytown Fire Company.

“It took me a few years to really get to a place where I felt comfortable writing about this,” Varner says. “Though I wish my father had spent more time away from the fire company, I started to truly understand what it meant to be a fire chief. And I didn’t resent the reasons he became a fireman. If anything, I understood this complex, flawed, heroic and loving man even more.”

Jay Varner, 29, graduated in 2003 with bachelor’s degree in creative writing from Susquehanna University in Selinsgrove, Pa. While there he helped found The Susquehanna Review, one of the few national literary journals dedicated solely to undergraduate writing. After spending a year working the fire and police beat for the Lewistown Sentinel, he earned a master’s of fine arts degree in creative nonfiction from UNC Wilmington in 2007.

He is currently working on a novel set in Pennsylvania about two brothers, and another nonfiction work. “In the past three years, I somehow stumbled into a situation with a villain just as chilling as my grandfather. There’s all sorts of things going on in this story—the recession, the South, racism, technology — and despite all the awful stuff, some of it seems very funny to me. But, just like before, it’s something that was a really painful experience and I think I still need more time to just process what it all means.”

Jay Varner is the assistant director of Champion Tutoring in Charlottesville, Va., where he lives with his wife, Danielle DeRise.

For information about the Meet the Author event, call The Country Bookshop at (910) 692-3211.