Review: Young Men and Fire

When I was a resident of the Treasure State, I knew all about one of its most tragic chapters. One cannot live within a stone's throw of Helena, Montana, without knowing at least a few details about the Mann Gulch fire, a deadly 1949 inferno that spawned films, books, songs, and changes in how firefighters are trained. Even so, I did not read -- or, in this case, listen to -- the most famous account of the event until this month, shortly after its 70th anniversary.

In Young Men and Fire, winner of the 1992 National Book Critics Circle Award, Norman Maclean tells the story of 15 smokejumpers and a Forest Service ranger who battled a blaze in a rugged and remote ravine near the Missouri River. Published two years after the author's death, the detailed nonfiction account is a staple of Montana literature.

Maclean, a University of Chicago professor and the author of A River Runs Through It, approaches the fire as a scholar, a former firefighter, and a woodsman who was in the area when the fire broke out. Though he spends much of the book examining the scientific particulars of the fire and firefighting, he also offers touching portraits of the heroes and those directly affected by the tragic event.

Only three of the men walked away from the site, including 17-year-old Robert Sallee, the youngest member of the crew, and Wagner (Wag) Dodge, the oldest. Dodge, the 33-year-old foreman, survived by lighting a small grass fire, sitting in the embers, and waiting as the larger blaze passed around him. Sallee and Walter Rumsey, 21, escaped by beating the inferno to the lee side of a ridge.

Though Young Men and Fire does not have the depth or scope of The Big Burn, Timothy Egan's work on the Great Fire of 1910, or even similar books on natural disasters, it is nonetheless compelling, informative, and highly readable. Maclean offers both science and poetry in explaining a tragic event that still defies understanding.

I would recommend the book to general readers, fans of Montana literature, and those who love stories of heroism and sacrifice. Rating: 4/5. (Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.)