Wildfire Days
A Woman, a Hotshot Crew, and the Burning American West
-
-
4.4 • 7 Ratings
-
-
- $14.99
Publisher Description
In the exhilarating spirit of Wild and A Walk in the Park, an adventure-filled memoir of one woman’s struggle to succeed as a wildland firefighter on an elite, male-dominated crew as they battle some of the fiercest wildfires in the West.
When Kelly Ramsey drives over a California mountain pass to join an elite firefighting crew, she’s terrified that she won’t be able to keep up with the intense demands of the job. Not only will she be the only woman on this hotshot crew and their first in ten years, she’ll also be among the oldest. As she trains relentlessly to overcome the crew’s skepticism and gain their respect, megafires erupt across the West, posing an increasing danger both on the job and back home. In vivid prose that evokes the majesty of Northern California’s forests, Kelly takes us on the ground to see how major wildfires are fought and to lay bare the psychological toll, the bone-deep weariness, and the unbreakable camaraderie that emerge in the face of nature’s fury.
Despite the wear and tear of her rookie year in fire, Kelly gears up for a second season, determined to prove that not only can a woman survive this work, she can excel. But when her plans to marry her partner start to crumble and sparks fly with a fellow crew member, Kelly wrestles with whether she’s truly outgrown the self-destructive patterns she’s learned from her father, whose drinking and itinerant ways haunt her. And as the season wears on, she discovers how tenuous “belonging” can be amid ever-changing crew dynamics.
In this vivid, visceral, and intimate memoir, Kelly wrestles with the immense power of fire for both destruction and renewal, confronted with the questions: Which fires do you fight, and which do you let burn you clean?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this vivid debut memoir, Ramsey recounts fighting California wildfires for the U.S. Forest Service in 2020 and 2021. When Ramsey was 35, her estranged, unhoused father called her to ask for money, spurring her to "silence grief" about his circumstances with extreme physical exertion, including regular, 14-mile solo hikes in the woods. The next year, following a breakup, Ramsey drew on her newly intense relationship with nature, moved from Texas to California, and took a job with the Forest Service as a wilderness ranger. While living in government barracks with female firefighters, she became "smitten with a new vision of what a woman could be. In a word: strong." That inspired her to seek a spot with the Rowdy River Hotshots fire crew, an elite group that tackled "the most difficult and remote parts of wildfires." Ramsey became the only woman on the 20-person team, battling sexism and her own insecurities to help contain a series of blazes, including the massive McCash fire, which spanned from Northern California's Six Rivers National Forest to "the poison oak–riddled canyons of the Klamath." Arresting prose, plenty of action, and a strong emotional undercurrent make this sing. Agents: Sam Stoloff and Sulamita Garbuz, Frances Goldin Literary. Correction: An earlier version of this review misstated which years the author fought wildfires and her age when her father called her to ask for money.
