The Fire Line: The Story of the Granite Mountain Hotshots

by Fernanda Santos Narrated by Ari Fliakos

Overview

“In Fernanda Santos' expert hands, the story of 19 men and a raging wildfire unfolds as a riveting, pulse-pounding account of an American tragedy; and also as a meditation on manhood, brotherhood and family love. The Fire Line is a great and deeply moving book about courageous men and women.”

- Héctor Tobar, author of Deep Down Dark: The Untold Stories of 33 Men Buried in a Chilean Mine and the Miracle that Set Them Free.

When a bolt of lightning ignited a hilltop in the sleepy town of Yarnell, Arizona, in June of 2013, setting off a blaze that would grow into one of the deadliest fires in American history, the twenty men who made up the Granite Mountain Hotshots sprang into action.

An elite crew trained to combat the most challenging wildfires, the Granite Mountain Hotshots were a ragtag family, crisscrossing the American West and wherever else the fires took them. The Hotshots were loyal to one another and dedicated to the tough job they had. There's Eric Marsh, their devoted and demanding superintendent who turned his own personal demons into lessons he used to mold, train and guide his crew; Jesse Steed, their captain, a former Marine, a beast on the fire line and a family man who wasn't afraid to say “I love you” to the firemen he led; Andrew Ashcraft, a team leader still in his 20s who struggled to balance his love for his beautiful wife and four children and his passion for fighting wildfires. We see this band of brothers at work, at play and at home, until a fire that burned in their own backyards leads to a national tragedy.

Impeccably researched, drawing upon more than a hundred hours of interviews with the firefighters' families, colleagues, state and federal officials, and fire historians and researchers, New York Times Phoenix Bureau Chief Fernanda Santos has written a riveting, pulse-pounding narrative of an unthinkable disaster, a remarkable group of men and the raging wildfires that threaten our country's treasured wild lands.

The Fire Line is the winner of the 2017 Spur Award for Best First Nonfiction Book, and Spur Award Finalist for Best Western Contemporary Nonfiction.

Editorial Reviews

JUNE 2016 - AudioFile

After being reminded that the Yarnell Hill fire in Arizona in 2013 killed 19 firefighters, listeners follow the story of the fire, the deaths, and the aftermath. The author narrates a heartfelt introduction and afterword. Ari Fliakos’s reading of the text is subdued and serious, as befits the material. Good pacing and well-placed inflection keep the forward momentum, and his serious tone, devoid of drama, adds to the sense of foreboding as the events unfold. He alters his voice slightly for quotes from women and children, but otherwise maintains a neutral observer’s tone. Overall, Fliakos’s delivery is reminiscent of a reporter’s eyewitness account: well pitched to the text, unadorned, absorbing, and effective. W.M. © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine

From the Publisher

Ari Fliakos's reading of the text is subdued and serious, as befits the material. Good pacing and well-placed inflection keep the forward momentum, and his serious tone, devoid of drama, adds to the sense of foreboding as the events unfold...Fliakos's delivery is reminiscent of a reporter's eyewitness account: well pitched to the text, unadorned, absorbing, and effective.” -AudioFile.com

JUNE 2016 - AudioFile

After being reminded that the Yarnell Hill fire in Arizona in 2013 killed 19 firefighters, listeners follow the story of the fire, the deaths, and the aftermath. The author narrates a heartfelt introduction and afterword. Ari Fliakos’s reading of the text is subdued and serious, as befits the material. Good pacing and well-placed inflection keep the forward momentum, and his serious tone, devoid of drama, adds to the sense of foreboding as the events unfold. He alters his voice slightly for quotes from women and children, but otherwise maintains a neutral observer’s tone. Overall, Fliakos’s delivery is reminiscent of a reporter’s eyewitness account: well pitched to the text, unadorned, absorbing, and effective. W.M. © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews

2016-03-08
New York Times Phoenix bureau chief Santos looks into a lightning-caused blaze that killed 19 Arizona firefighters in the summer of 2013. Early on in her first book, the author notes that while the fire itself was the agent of death, it was a string of miscommunications and guesswork—preventable but, in retrospect, seemingly inevitable human error—that sent the Granite Mountain Hotshots to their doom. Determining responsibility for those miscommunications and the poor judgment that resulted has riven the city of Prescott, the Hotshots' home, and especially its politicians. When considering whether to disband the elite unit, "the only one to have a city as its employer, and only one of two to operate under the auspices of a structural fire department," city officials had to wrestle more with questions of money and liability than they did the rightness or the necessity of keeping such a team on the books. (There was talk, Santos writes, of privatizing the venture, an idea that is still current.) The events of the fire were well-covered in the national media, in part by this author. Less well known are some of these post-mortem matters, her coverage of which makes a valuable contribution to the literature of disaster preparedness and management—and given that wildfire is a growing problem in the ever more arid West, that literature needs all the good work it can get. As a narrative, though, the book is less satisfying; the prose is flat, and it has all the hallmarks of a stretched-out newspaper story, with the usual clichés, set pieces, and stock descriptions: "Christopher MacKenzie, thirty, was single and a bit of a Don Juan, with a huge shoe collection, entering his ninth fire season"; "Doppler radars look like giant golf balls perched atop squat buildings or steel towers"; "Those were the ingredients for the disaster that was about to unfold." It's no Young Men and Fire, but Santos provides a good summary of terrible events and their aftermath.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940169485387
Publisher:	Macmillan Audio
Publication date:	05/03/2016
Edition description:	Unabridged

Videos