Young Men and Fire by Norman Maclean

Though this was not on the list we were given at the beginning of the year, Young Men and Fire was a book that I was assigned to read in English. Many aspects of the information within the book related to our class’s unit on natural disasters. The book is about a catastrophic fire in Mann Gulch, a forest preserve in Montana, in 1949. Thirteen “Smokejumpers,” young fire fighters who were trained by the US Forest Service to jump out of planes into forest fires, were tragically killed in the fire in a matter of minutes, leaving only three of the original crew left alive. This fire not only left grief and anger in its wake, but also mystery and scientific debate on the fire’s origins and events that took place during those few minutes. Maclean, who became entranced with the story of the fire when he was a young man, writes of his quest in finding out what really happened in Mann Gulch. I have never taken an interest in forest fires before and hadn’t even known about this one. Yet, I found Maclean’s style of writing to be captivating and the story interesting; it read like a mystery and a scholarly book in one. Even if someone doesn’t know anything about forest fires, the book is still understandable. Though some explanations were worth skimming over (like Maclean’s lengthy explanation on fire whirls, how the Smokejumpers began, and the invention of the parachute), Maclean ties together his scientific findings with the story of the fire and his own personal narrative of his years of research on the fire.