cover image When It All Burns: Fighting Fire in a Transformed World

When It All Burns: Fighting Fire in a Transformed World

Jordan Thomas. Riverhead, $30 (368p) ISBN 978-0-593-54482-2

Anthropologist Thomas debuts with an essential meditation on fire’s role on a warming planet. The central narrative recounts his six-month tenure as a member of the Los Padres Hotshots, an elite federal fire-fighting crew, in 2021, discussing how even as the group engaged in lighthearted prank wars with other crews, they struggled with the stress of working under perilous conditions. Providing visceral accounts of his most harrowing deployments, Thomas describes, for instance, falling off a small cliff after passing out while battling a Big Sur megafire in 123 °F heat, only to haul himself back up to the top and continue clearing brush. Supplementing his recollections, Thomas provides captivating background on how colonial-era bans on Indigenous controlled burns set the stage for today’s inadequate fire suppression practices; how climate change has made fires more severe and frequent; and how private firefighters, retardant manufacturers, and lumber companies take advantage of fire disasters by selling to the government often faulty services that prioritize profit over effectiveness. Writing with exceptional verve, Thomas captures the furious intensity of working on the fire line (“The sawyers circled one another like swordsmen in a duel, cutting every last branch they could find until none were left and they faced each other with heaving chests and sweat pouring through the grime”). Narrative nonfiction doesn’t get better than this. Agent: Alice Whitwham, Cheney Agency. (May)