Portland writer Nina St. Pierre tells the story of her mother in this memoir.

By turns magnificent, terrifying, destructive and ultimately regenerative — fire was the element that figured most powerfully in the life of Nina St. Pierre’s mom.

In a new memoir called “Love Is a Burning Thing,” St. Pierre revisits her childhood as the daughter and firstborn child of Anita, a woman who was spiritually curious, geographically restless, and quite likely an undiagnosed schizophrenic.

Along with her younger half-brother Chris, St. Pierre’s early years were peripatetic, as their mom moved them around communities scattered up and down the I-5 corridor in California. Anita was usually impoverished, and frequently in search of food and housing for her family of three, as well as some kind of employment for herself.

This week’s book

This week’s book

“Love Is a Burning Thing” by Nina St. Pierre

Dutton — 320 pp — $28

But her most important quest always seemed to be for spiritual enlightenment.

St. Pierre writes that in her mom’s view, “every earthly struggle had a spiritual counterpart. Everything had double, triple, infinite meaning. Earth was never the end game.”

Eventually, they settled in a community within view of Mt. Shasta, because the volcanic peak was reputed to have an energy vortex that enabled cosmic connection. Their new hometown attracted other spiritual seekers to the area, too.

For her kids, this may have helped them accept Anita’s passion for astral planes and tarot cards, portals and gurus and Catholic saints.

For Anita, this sacred pastiche was baseline normal. After all, what kind of support was the “real world” giving her? Her preoccupation with finding an alternative to the material world was nothing new.

Ten years before Anita became pregnant with St. Pierre, she and another young woman had entered into a death pact and set themselves on fire. The other woman perished in the flames. Anita survived — but suffered burns across 20% of her body. Her ears were burned off, and the many skin grafts required to repair the rest of her body left her badly scarred.

If Anita was disenchanted with life before her attempt at self-immolation, her experiences as a disabled woman after the fact did little to change her perspective. Everything became harder.

St. Pierre thinks that this is why her mother became such an avid spiritual seeker.

“In the cosmic terrain, she and her friends had more agency. They didn’t have to tussle directly with the systems — family, political or otherwise — that had failed them.”

And then, when St. Pierre went away to college but her brother was still living at home, her mother set another fire. This conflagration, too, had significant impacts, and Anita was charged with arson.

Yet throughout all of this, there seemed to be no burning question on anyone’s part to look into whether mental illness could be a factor. Neither St. Pierre’s father nor Chris’ dad — both long-distance parents — did much to challenge Anita’s behavior or probe their own child’s safety.

St. Pierre was a Portland-based writer when she began this investigative memoir several years ago after her mother died of natural causes.

“Love Is a Burning Thing” is a haunting read.