Fire by George R. Stewart, Emma Rothschild (Introduction by); 1948/2024. Softcover. (New York Review Books)

From the author of Storm, a breathtaking novel about a raging fire and the path of destruction and change it leaves in its wake. Spitcat, a raging forest fire in the Sierra Nevada of California, had a lifespan of merely eleven days, "yet its effects could be reckoned ahead in centuries." So writes George R. Stewart in this engrossing novel of a fire started by lightning in the dry heat of September, and fanned out of control by unexpected winds. The book begins with the origins of the fire--smoldering quietly at first, unnoticed, then suddenly bursting into a terrifying inferno, devouring trees and animals over acre after acre and leaving nothing but desolation in its wake. Firefighters and lookouts, forest rangers and smokejumpers-as well as animals in the forest, many of them the bewildered victims of the blaze, and all the varied trees and bushes there-are characters of this realistic story.