Wildfire Days: A Woman, a Hotshot Crew, and the Burning American West by Ramsey, Kelly

Wildfire Days: A Woman, a Hotshot Crew, and the Burning American West (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781668031483)

Vendor: Kelly Ramsey
Product type: Books
Format: Paperback
$20.00
$20.00
$20.00
Subtotal: $20.00
Wildfire Days: A Woman, a Hotshot Crew, and the Burning American West by Ramsey, Kelly

Wildfire Days: A Woman, a Hotshot Crew, and the Burning American West

$20.00
Wildfire Days: A Woman, a Hotshot Crew, and the Burning American West by Ramsey, Kelly

Wildfire Days: A Woman, a Hotshot Crew, and the Burning American West

$20.00
Format: Paperback
Description
Description
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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?

Author: Kelly Ramsey
ISBN-10: 1668031485
ISBN-13: 9781668031483
Publisher: Scribner Book Company
Language: English
Published: 06/23/2026
Pages: 352
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.57lbs
Size: 8.38h x 5.50w x 0.80d
By Kelly Ramsey
By Kelly Ramsey
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Kelly Ramsey was born in Frankfort, Kentucky. She studied poetry at the University of Virginia and fiction writing at the University of Pittsburgh. She cofounded The Lighthouse Works, an artists' residency program, and later moved to Northern California, where she worked for the US Forest Service as a trail maintenance worker, wilderness ranger, and wildland firefighter. Her writing has appeared in The Washington Post, Sierra, Electric Literature, and the anthology Letter to a Stranger. She lives in Redding, California, with her partner and their dog, Rookie.

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