Young Men & Fire

This book's energy consists of "the universe's four elements at work: sky, earth, fire, and young men." The Mann Gulch forest fire, which killed 13 smokejumpers in 1949, incites the author's fourteen-year investigation of the tragedy years later. The narrator's throaty voice (he's the author's son and a pastor's grandson) seems stiff. As the story unfolds in its roundabout way, his performance sometimes sounds like a taciturn minister's pulpit delivery.Yet, he reads his father's unconventional denouement, a sermon of curious metaphors on the ultimate meaning of the deaths, without even a hint of clerical passion. The sound of crackling fire in dry pine logs provides innovative chapter breaks. J.A.H. (c) AudioFile 2001, Portland, Maine

August 31, 1992
On Aug. 5, 1949, 16 Forest Service smoke jumpers landed at a fire in remote Mann Gulch, Mont. Within an hour, 13 were dead or irrevocably burned, caught in a ``blowup''--a rare explosion of wind and flame. The late Maclean, author of the acclaimed A River Runs Through It , grew up in western Montana and worked for the Forest Service in his youth. He visited the site of the blowup; for the next quarter century, the tragedy haunted him. In 1976 he began a serious study of the fire, one that occupied the last 14 years of his life. He enlisted the aid of fire experts, survivors, friends in the Forest Service and reams of official documents. The result is an engrossing account of human fallibility and natural violence. The tragedy was a watershed in Forest Service training--knowledge and techniques have since been improving--and this work will interest Maclean's many admirers. Photos not seen by PW. 30,000 first printing.