She became a ‘hotshot' wilderness firefighter to write about being on the front lines

This week, we are jumping into the fire with Kelly Ramsey. Her new book, 'Wildfire Days: A Woman, A Hotshot Crew, and The Burning American West,' chronicles her time fighting some of the state's most dangerous conflagrations alongside an all-male crew of Hotshots. The elite wildland firefighters are tasked with applying their tactical knowledge to tamp down the biggest fires in the state. We also look at recent releases reviewed by Times critics. And a local bookseller tells us what our next great read should be.
In 2017, Ramsey found herself in a holding pattern. Living in Austin, with an MFA from the University of Pittsburgh under her belt, she didn't know what or where she wanted to be. So she took a nanny job. 'I was spending all my time outdoors with these kids,' she told me. 'I thought, is there a job that would allow me to be outside all the time?'
Ramsey landed a volunteer summer gig working on a fire trail crew in Happy Camp, Northern California, on the Klamath River. While Ramsey was learning the delicate art of building firebreaks, a large fire broke out just outside the town. 'My introduction to California that summer was filled with smoke,' says the author. 'This is when I got the bug, when I started to become interested in fighting fires.'
Ramsey became a qualified firefighter in 2019, joining an entirely male crew of fellow Hotshots. Ramsey's book 'Wildfire Days' is the story of that fraught and exciting time. We talked to Ramsey about the 'bro culture' of fire crews, the adrenaline surge of danger and the economic hardships endured by these frontline heroes.
Below, read our interview with Ramsey, who you can see at Vroman's on June 23. This Q&A has been edited for length and clarity.
(Please note: The Times may earn a commission through links to Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookstores.)
What was it like when you confronted a big fire for the first time?
It was the Bush fire in Arizona. I was so incredulous, just marveling at what was happening. 'Look at that smoke,' and 'that helicopter is making a water drop.' It was kind of a rookie move, because all the other crew members had seen it thousands of times. To see a helicopter up close making a drop, it looks like this gorgeous waterfall. I had to get acclimated to the epic nature of fires. And that wasn't even a big fire, really.
In the book, you talk about entering into a pretty macho culture. How difficult was it for you to gain acceptance into this cloistered male world of the fire crew?
It was definitely shocking at first, to be in an entirely male space. The Forest Service had some sexual harassment scandals in 2017, so everyone was on their best behavior at first. It took me some time before I was accepted into the group. I had to perform over-the-top, irrefutably great, just to prove to them that I was OK. It's an unfair standard, but that's the way it was. I wanted to shift the way they saw women, or have better conversations about gender and fire.
You write about the pride and stoicism of the fire crew members, the ethos of actions rather than words. No one brags or whines, you just get on with it. Why?
When my editor was going through the book, he insisted that I mention the 75 pounds of gear I was always carrying on my back, and I resisted, because you don't complain about that kind of thing when you're out there. But I realized that readers would want to know these details, so I put them in. I was inclined to leave them out.
You also write about the difficulties of re-entering civilian life.
I don't know of any firefighters who don't struggle with the idea of living a normal, quiet life. It's just a massive letdown after the adrenaline rush of the fire season.
What was shocking to me reading 'Wildfire Days' is that fire crews are essentially paid minimum wage to work one of the most dangerous jobs in the state.
It was $16.33 an hour when I was in the crew. And most firefighters that I worked with didn't have other jobs. They would take unemployment until the next fire season rolled around. You would just scrape by. During the first month of the season, everyone would be flat broke, eating cans of tuna. The joke is that you get paid in sunsets. But we all love being out there. The camaraderie is so intense and so beautiful.
Hamilton Cain reviews National Book Award winner Susan Choi's new novel, 'Flashlight,' a mystery wrapped inside a fraught family drama. 'With Franzen-esque fastidiousness,' Cain writes, 'Choi unpacks each character's backstory, exposing vanities and delusions in a cool, caustic voice, a 21st century Emile Zola.'
Jessica Ferri chats with Melissa Febos about her new memoir, 'The Dry Season,' about the year she went celibate and discovered herself anew. Febos wonders aloud why more women aren't more upfront with their partners about opting out of sex: 'This radical honesty not only benefits you but it also benefits your partner. To me, that's love: enthusiastic consent.'
Carole V. Bell reviews Maria Reva's 'startling metafictional' novel, 'Endling,' calling it 'a forceful mashup of storytelling modes that call attention to its interplay of reality and fiction — a Ukrainian tragicomedy of errors colliding with social commentary about the Russian invasion.'
Nick Owchar interviews Nathan Marsak about the reissue (from local publisher Angel City Press) of 'Los Angeles Before The Freeways: Images of an Era, 1850-1950,' a book of vintage photos snapped by Swedish émigré Arnold Hylen and curated by Marsak. Owchar calls the book 'an engrossing collection of black-and-white images of a city in which old adobe structures sit between Italianate office buildings or peek out from behind old signs, elegant homes teeter on the edge of steep hillsides, and routes long used by locals would soon be demolished to make room for freeways.'
And sad news for book lovers everywhere, as groundbreaking gay author Edmund White died this week at 85.
This week, we paid a visit to the Westside's great indie bookstore Diesel, which has been a locus for the community in the wake of January's Palisades fire. The store's manager, Kelsey Bomba, tells us what's flying off the store's shelves.
What books are popular right now:
Right now, Ocean Vuong's 'The Emperor of Gladness' is selling a ton, as [well as] Miranda July's 'All Fours' and Barry Diller's memoir, 'Who Knew.'
What future releases are you excited about:
Because I loved V.E. Schwab's 'The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue,' I'm excited to read her new book, 'Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil.' 'The Great Mann,' by Kyra Davis Lurie — we are doing an event with her on June 11.
What are the hardy perennials, the books that you sell almost all the time:
'One Hundred Years of Solitude' by Gabriel García Márquez, Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson series and the Elena Ferrante books, especially 'My Brilliant Friend.'
Diesel, A Bookstore is located at 225 26th St., Suite 33, Santa Monica CA 90402.

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Washington Post

3 days ago

• Washington Post

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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R85m Falcon spares scandal: SA Air Force VIP plane parts vanish amid security lapses

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