First published 2017
On August 5, 1949, fifteen elite Smokejumpers parachuted into Mann Gulch to fight a forest fire in the Montana wilderness. Within two hours, twelve of these airborne firefighters were dead or dying from burns. Norman Maclean spent four decades investigating this tragedy, piecing together scattered evidence and testimonies to understand what happened in those fatal moments. He examines the fire's behavior, the crew's decisions, and the landscape that trapped them. Maclean combines rigorous research with literary craftsmanship, drawing on interviews with survivors, weather reports, and fire science to reconstruct the disaster. The book won the National Book Critics Circle Award and stands as Maclean's final work. This twenty-fifth anniversary edition includes a new foreword by Timothy Egan. Maclean transforms a tragic incident into a meditation on courage, nature's power, and the lives of men who risk everything to protect forests.
Genres: history, 20th-century, adventure, non-fiction, biography-memoir, american-history
Vibes: intimate, lyrical, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: investigative-journalism, meditative
Setting: Mann Gulch, Montana
Period: 1949
369 pages · Paperback · University of Chicago Press
Content warnings: death, graphic-violence