Wildfire Days

About this book

FINALIST FOR THE WOMEN WRITING THE WEST 2026 WILLA LITERARY AWARD In the exhilarating spirit of Wild and A Walk in the Park, this "intimate and action-packed memoir" (Outside) follows 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 wildland 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 show how major wildfires are fought, revealing 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, she wrestles with whether she's truly outgrown the self-destructive patterns she's learned from her father, whose drinking and itinerant ways haunt her. As the season wears on, she discovers how tenuous "belonging" can be amid ever-changing crew dynamics. In this "moving, sometimes funny story about destruction, change, and rebirth" (Los Angeles Times), Kelly wrestles with the questions: Which fires do you fight, and which do you let burn you clean?