Wildfire

Julie has an obsession with fire that began after her parents died when she was twelve years old. Her pyromania leads her to take an unlikely job as a forest firefighter on an elite, Type 1 “Hotshot” crew of forest firefighters who travel the American West battling wildfires. The only woman on the twenty person crew, Julie struggles both to prove her worth and find a place of belonging in the dangerous, insular, and very masculine world of fire (while also fighting against an eating disorder she's had since her teens). As her season “on the line” progresses so do her relationships with the strange and varied cast of characters that make up her hotshots team—and she learns what it means to put your life on the line for someone else.

“I love this book. With stunning language and deep insight Lowry has written a novel that makes you feel, with nearly every sentence, that something big is at stake. It's been a damn long time since a novel knocked me around and made me care this way. The Hotshots’ world is exotic and specialized and the entry she offers is stunning and rare. But it is the heart of this book you will most want to know. Here is an original and special voice.” —Anthony Swofford, New York Times bestselling author of Jarhead

"The little known, intense, and clannish world of wildland firefighters is given bright dimensionality in Mary Pauline Lowry's novel. The action is high-octane and young Julie is a grand gritty creation, honed and realized by fire." —Joy Williams, author of The Quick and the Dead

"Young writers aren't supposed to understand as much as the prescient Mary Lowry. In Wildfire, she illuminates the cycle of life with a racing, insightful story, while the forested Rocky Mountains jump to flame around her characters. Firefighters are mostly male and Lowry uses their camaraderie and preconceived notions as a velvety rope with which to hang their outdated thinking. But this is really just a story about standing up to great forest fires and taking risks and you'll feel the sweet heat of that adventure, too." —James C. Moore, New York Times bestselling author of Bush’s Brain

“Mary Lowry’s Wildfire is one of those unique books that appear from time to time, a sort of Huck Finn meets Moby Dick, that is, if Huck was a spunky young woman and the white whale was a wildfire. It is told with a voice you can trust, drama, and with an authentic account of just what it is like to be on a fireline. Honest, entertaining, and important.” —Craig Nova, best-selling author

“Forget werewolves, vampires, and fantasy. Here's a true-life adventure lived by a woman who gave up the security of her college life in Texas and entered the wild and wooly world of the Hotshot firefighter. As a struggling rookie on the Pike Inter-Agency Hotshot Crew, Julie encounters forces that challenge the very essence of who she thinks she is. Out of the ashes of one long, hot summer comes a story of fighting wildfire from Colorado to Idaho to Southern California, all of it told by a woman, from the inside the experience, as she lived it herself. A tribute to the hard work and courage of Hotshots everywhere.” —Murry A. Taylor, author of Jumping Fire: A Smokejumper's Memoir of Fighting Wildfire

“Mary Pauline Lowry’s incendiary Wildfire illustrates that women can both fight fire—and write fiction about the American West—on par with men. Bold, funny, iconoclastic, and devastating. A fantastic read!” —Sarah Bird, author of The Gap Year and The Flamenco Academy

“Wildfire will not leave you unscathed. This brave and big-hearted novel about a young woman working on a foul-mouthed all-male forest-fire crew in the Rockies takes the reader into a world none of us have seen and makes it indelibly real and totally gripping. I know nothing quite like it.” —James Magnuson, author of Famous Writers I Have Known

“Mary Lowry’s Wildfire is absolutely riveting. A vivid, evocative, and emotionally complex journey through a dangerous and beautiful world.” —Lou Berney, Pushcart Prize winning author of Gutshot Straight and The Road to Bobby Joe and Other Stories

“Wildfire is the funniest, saddest, most harrowing, most exuberant novel I've read in years. Mary Lowry writes with an insider’s precision about the raucous camaraderie and dangerous work of wildland firefighting, but also with an artist's insight into a lonely young woman's determination to test herself, to belong to something, and to forge a life that matters.” —Stephen Harrigan, New York Times bestselling author of The Gates of the Alamo

“A riveting tale of adventure, courage and a young woman's search for meaning. Not to mention a fascinating guide to the techniques and culture of fighting wildfires. Brilliant!” —HW Brands, New York Times bestselling author of The First American and Traitor to His Class

"Lowry paints a vivid portrait of life as a hotshot. . . . In such scenes of true-to-life suspense and well-rendered detail, it's easy to forget this is a novel and not a work of nonfiction. Indeed, the writing is strongest where it reveals the extreme physical endurance of and deep camaraderie that forms in a hotshot crew." —Kirkus Reviews