Maclean, Norman. Young Men and Fire. University of Chicago Press, 2017.
Reason read: Hurricane Katrina destroyed New Orleans twenty years ago this month. Young Men and Fire is about a different natural disaster; one started by lightning strikes and odd wind patterns.
On August 5th, 1949 thirteen out of fifteen smokejumpers lost their lives in the Montana Mann Gulch fire. Started by multiple lightning strikes, Mann Gulch and the surrounding area was soon a blazing inferno, completely out of control. For years, researchers have studied the tragedy to make sense of how only a handful of men, two being smokejumpers, survived. Someone needed to be blamed. Explanations were dire. Controversy surrounding foreman Dodge’s intentional lighting of an escape fire only added to the mystery. In 1978 Norman Maclean brought Robert Sallee and Walter Rumsey, the two surviving smokejumpers, back to Mann Gulch. Their memories of the tragedy were so sharp they were able to remember a can of white potatoes with two knife punctures. Nearly thirty years later, they could find the same can complete with puncture holes.
Beyond walking the scene of the catastrophe, Maclean and others plotted a course of reasonable explanation. They rationalized that if mathematics could be used to predict fire, why couldn’t math be applied to a past fire to reconstruct it? The science behind this was fascinating.
As an aside, this was the first time I read a publisher’s note explaining how a book which was published posthumously, came to be structured, fact-checked and released to the world. The University of Chicago Press was able to express its gratitude for the people who brought Young Men and Fire to bookshelves. I thought it wise of the University of Chicago Press to include “Black Ghost” as the preface to Young Men and Fire. A seemingly unrelated essay, it introduced Maclean’s personal experiences with fire and why the Mann Gulch tragedy was important to him.
In the end Maclean desperately wanted to believe the thirteen smokejumpers did not suffer. He consulted a doctor who said that asphyxiating in a fire is much like drowning; “it is not terrible,” was the conclusion. If you have read A Perfect Storm by Sebastian Junger you might remember his play by play description of what it is like to drown. No thank you.
Memorable line, “No one who survived saw what happened to those who became crosses on that hillside” (p 307).
Author fact: in the introduction by Timothy Egan he shared that when Maclean was looking for a publisher for Young Men and Fire he was approached by a publisher who had previously turned him down for A River Runs Through It. As everyone knows, River was a smashing success. Big mistake. Big. Big. Mistake. Maclean was reported as saying he wouldn’t give this well known publisher Young Men and Fire if they were the last company on earth. Talk about a Pretty Woman moment!
Book trivia: Young Men and Fire includes photographs that not only show the devastation of the fire but also explain how the tragedy occurred.
BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “What a (Natural) Disaster!” (p 242).
~*LunaSea*~ 