A terrifying look at wildfires from the hotshots who fight them

According to the National Interagency Fire Center, there were 64,897 wildfires that charred nearly 9 million acres of the United States in 2024. Those numbers are well above the five- and 10-year averages.
These figures may not be surprising given the changes in weather patterns across the country, including higher temperatures and unusually dry conditions in some areas, but they project a sobering message: We are living in an age of unprecedented, unpredictable wildfires — and we need a solution fast.
Two passionately told, impeccably researched and important new books by veteran hotshot firefighters weigh in on the matter: Jordan Thomas's 'When It All Burns: Fighting Fire in a Transformed World' and Kelly Ramsey's 'Wildfire Days: A Woman, a Hotshot Crew, and the Burning American West.'
Full of vivid (and terrifying) descriptions of what it feels like to be on the front lines battling blazes, both books drop readers into the furnace, inviting us not only to witness how much intense training, sheer willpower and brute strength it takes to hack away at these infernos day after day but also to realize how stuck in the mud we are if we don't admit the severity of the situation and address the problem.
'When It All Burns' touches down in the summer of 2020, when covid-19 shutdowns were in full swing. A self-described 'overeducated, unemployed millennial living in an overpriced garage,' Thomas had just decided to press pause on his anthropology PhD program to interview for the Los Padres Hotshots, one of 100 elite outfits in the United States he describes as the 'Navy SEALs of wildland firefighters.'
After he joined the squad in 2021, his six-month tour of duty began. To say it was ruthless, harrowing and exhausting is an understatement. His 20-person company was deployed at a moment's notice wherever they were most needed, from a desert wildfire in Nevada to a lightning-strike blaze in Arizona to a towering redwood grove aflame in Big Sur, California. During his tenure, Thomas's progression from a naive and mistake-prone 'kook' who 'wore safety glasses to sharpen his saw' to a skilled and dependable member of the team feels excruciating but hard-won. By the end of the book, when the tobacco-chewing, foulmouthed and hypermasculine crew finally accepts him, we're relieved — and impressed.
But while Thomas's detailed descriptions of grueling brush-hacking sessions and near-constant life-threatening scenarios are riveting, the book's power comes from its methodical, clear-eyed and convincing explanation of how we wound up here in the first place — in a world where megafires inevitably rage out of control, annihilating every town and ecosystem in their path.
In fascinating sections scattered throughout the book, Thomas traces the progression of American forest management practices throughout history, from thousands of years before European settlement — when Indigenous peoples used controlled burns as a method to protect the environment, foster healthy regeneration and enhance biodiversity — to today's age of mass logging and fire suppression. 'On average, landscapes created by corporate forestry hold approximately seven times the density of those managed with fire,' Thomas writes. 'Each of these factors — the homogeneity of the trees' age, the standardization of tree species, and their density — has combined with climate change to transform forests into tinderboxes.'
Thomas's proposed solutions involve finding common ground between diametrically opposed parties who disagree on the best path forward — perhaps a partnership between local Indigenous tribes and government agencies such as the U.S. Forest Service, in tandem with statewide initiatives that bolster the honorable work of combating fires (including paying hotshots a well-deserved living wage and health-care benefits, which they are ineligible for now). He also recommends more sustainable forest management practices such as reintroducing prescribed burns to increase forests' resilience to climate change.
While Thomas's 'When It All Burns' aims mostly at the head, Ramsey's 'Wildfire Days' targets the heart. It chronicles Ramsey's two-year tenure in 2020 and 2021, first as a wilderness ranger for the U.S. Forest Service in Northern California, then as a member of the region's Rowdy River Hotshots.
Though she and Thomas cover similar territory, albeit in slightly different geographical terrain, Ramsey's recollections of digging fire lines and lighting controlled burns, scaling mountain faces and working 16-hour days on her feet stand apart because, at 38, she was one of the oldest members of her crew. Though she was the first woman to make the Rowdy River Hotshots ranks in 10 years, the fact that she was the only woman put her at a double disadvantage, she writes: 'female, or small, and old.'
That played out in some ways you might expect. There are amusing references to hiding tampons everywhere she might need one, and stories about trying to find a suitable place outside to pee amid a sea of men. A large portion of the book is also devoted to her thorny relationships with others: her alcoholic and eventually homeless father; Eddie, a fellow hotshot whom she (obviously) had a crush on; and her fiancé, Josh (also a firefighter, though not a hotshot), who increasingly resented the close friendships she developed with her new Rowdy River family.
But the true spine of this inspiring memoir is Ramsey's progression from the 'careful, compliant girl I had been for most of my life, half-starved to stay thin,' to a full-throttle warrior who could hold her own alongside some of the most fearless firefighters in the nation. 'I'd fallen in love with the person I became, fighting fire. I loved her physical strength, her dirty skin and two-week-old clothes that had hardened to a crust,' she writes of her transformation. 'I was a mess. I was a machine. I had the thighs of a champion racehorse. I'd never been more proud.'
Fighting fires is relentless and epically dangerous; the constant threat of death or injury and the stress on personal relationships are just two of the job's many downsides. But as Thomas and Ramsey prove in their books, the work is both necessary and rewarding, especially now.
'We need to ratchet down the burning of fossil fuels, ratchet up the intentional burning of our landscapes, and support people like the hotshots who work to contain the unfolding disasters of our society's creation,' Thomas writes. 'If megafires can remind us of anything, it is of the precarity of our relationship with our environments and the work required to care for those places that matter to us.'
Alexis Burling is a writer and editor whose work has appeared in the New York Times Book Review, the San Francisco Chronicle and the Chicago Tribune, among other publications.
Fighting Fires in a Transformed World
By Jordan Thomas.
Riverhead. 368 pp. $30
A Woman, a Hotshot Crew, and the Burning American West
By Kelly Ramsey.
Scribner. 352 pp. $29

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