BURNT

A pioneering woman firefighter recounts a life on the line.

Frank opens on a climacteric point long into her multidecade career: She was in line for a promotion to California’s state chief of fire protection, “a position six ranks above captain, and successor to the director if something took him out of play.” The problem was, after attaining the rank of captain, you can’t ride in a firetruck, and a firetruck is where she was born to be. The author writes about her beginnings as a rookie longing for a fire in California’s backcountry that would allow her to prove herself to those who doubted she belonged; of one surprising ladder maneuver, she writes, “It wasn’t martial arts pretty, but I left some mouths open.” After battling lightning- and human-caused wildfires, stumbling upon remote marijuana fields and meth labs, and facing just about every challenge fire could throw her way, a gruesome injury forced her to leave active service. She studied for a law degree and entered the corporate world for only as long as it took to heal and then got right back out on the line. “I liked lawyering,” she writes, “but it didn’t satisfy me the way firefighting did—especially on a day like [9/11]. While former colleagues packed their bags to help at Ground Zero and my brother drove north to protect our state, I sat in my ergonomically correct chair, shoes kicked off under my desk, feeling useless.” Throughout the book, Frank is energetic and inspirational, especially to women considering work in the field—though she is always candid about the countless dangers of the job, from being caught up in a firestorm to going down in a tanker plane. Regardless of the potential pitfalls, there will be plenty of work in the future, with climate change ensuring that large swaths of California will burn regularly. The author includes a helpful 12-page glossary at the end.

A vigorous and quite timely memoir.