Young Men and Fire

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.

August 1, 1992
Maclean grew up in Montana and was for many years an English professor at the University of Chicago. Following his death in 1990, the publisher completed the manuscript for this book. Young Men and Fire revolves around the 1949 Mann Gulch forest fire in Montana where 13 smokejumpers perished. Maclean, author of A River Runs Through It & Other Stories (G.K. Hall, 1976), is ever the storyteller. Here he crafts two accounts simultaneously. One is the story of the fire. The other is told with special urgency by an old man knowing he has little time to discover what happened on a flaming ridge over 30 years ago. To find the truth of the tragedy, Maclean climbs the steep slopes of the valley of death, projects himself into the short lives of the firefighters, and uses mathematical models to reconstruct events. Although some of the editing is rough, this remains a moving account of humanity, nature, and the perseverance of the human spirit. The release of the film A River Runs Through It in October may step up demand for this title as well.-- Daniel Liestman, Seattle Pacific Univ.

Copyright 1992 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 1, 1992
In 1949, less than a decade after the first firefighter parachuted to a blaze, a blowup--which is to a forest fire "something like a hurricane to an ocean storm"--claimed the lives of 13 smoke jumpers in Mann Gulch, Montana. The author of the revered "A River Runs through It" happened to be nearby, and images of the devastation germinated in his imagination, bearing fruit in this work. Unfinished at his death in 1990, the book pursues several narratives: the tale of the fated smoke jumpers, the scientific search for the cause of blowups, and Maclean's search for the story (an act of religious faith) that will imbue the catastrophe with significance. He avers that stories "do not have to be made up--that is all-important to us" and affirms a nondenominational faith "that in this cockeyed world there are shapes and designs, if only we have some curiosity, training, and compassion and take care not to lie or be sentimental." Although Maclean's depictions of the principals may be a bit reverential, his evocations of forest fires and smoke-jumping are unparalleled, his philosophical overtones are hard won, and he is almost audibly in the reader's presence--as a storyteller should be. ((Reviewed July 1992))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1992, American Library Association.)