A book about smokejumpers based at Missoula, Montana is due to be released April 12, 2011. Written by New York Times-best selling author Nora Roberts, “Chasing Fire” is about “the world of elite firefighters who thrive on danger and adrenaline-men and women who wouldn’t know how to live life if it wasn’t on the edge”.
Few wildland fire books are written by really good authors, and after reading several pages, this may be one to add to that list.
Here how Chasing Fire begins; a much longer excerpt can be found here:
Caught in the crosshairs of wind above the Bitterroots, the jump ship fought to find its stream. Fire boiling over the land jabbed its fists up through towers of smoke as if trying for a knockout punch.
From her seat Rowan Tripp angled to watch a seriously pissed-off Mother Nature’s big show. In minutes she’d be inside it, enclosed in the mad world of searing heat, leaping flames, choking smoke. She’d wage war with shovel and saw, grit and guile. A war she didn’t intend to lose.
Her stomach bounced along with the plane, a sensation she’d taught herself to ignore. She’d flown all of her life, and had fought wildfires every season since her eighteenth birthday. For the last half of those eight years she’d jumped fire.
She’d studied, trained, bled and burned—outwilled pain and exhaustion to become a Zulie. A Missoula smoke jumper.
She stretched out her long legs as best she could for a moment, rolled her shoulders under her pack to keep them loose.
Beside her, her jump partner watched as she did. His fingers did a fast tap dance on his thighs. “She looks mean.”
“We’re meaner.”
He shot her a fast, toothy grin. “Bet your ass.
The book can be pre-ordered at Amazon. It will be available in print and Kindle editions.
More information about the book, and the author, Nora Roberts.
Thanks Dick
