HOTSHOT

A female firefighter’s time as an elite hotshot.

Selby had been a sex worker, a heroin addict, and a runaway by the time they began wildland firefighting at age 19. As much to their surprise as anyone’s, they found themself both loving and excelling in the firefighting ranks. In this debut memoir, they recount their years on the most elite—and male-dominated—firefighting crews in the country. With visceral prose, they bring readers directly to the heat and intensity of the front lines day and night, where in the darkness “coursing waves of embers shot upwards from conjoined flames as if the sky were reclaiming its lost stars.” Despite the dangers, many of their biggest challenges were not to come from the fire itself, however, or even the grueling days of hiking through dense brush carrying heavy packs and tools. Selby recounts the barrage of sexism they encountered on the fire lines in the early 2000s, where their fellow firefighters were often all male and Selby’s presence was the focus of constant harassment. Selby writes with immediacy of the intimidation they faced, from stalking to verbal degradation, and their struggles to remember “that I was a person who existed in my own right, not just as a girl firefighter.” Shot through with their own challenges of bulimia, alcoholism, and relationships, the story is one of power and resilience, of someone struggling to make a life for themself in the inhospitable and challenging career of wildland firefighting. Spliced within it are historical and scientific examinations of firefighting in the American West. Deeply researched, these segments provide context for the book, but it is the narrative that is most gripping. With fortitude and admirable vulnerability, Selby brings readers directly into a tumultuous time and place. Like fire, this book burns hot.

Selby molds personal and ecological acceptance into a moving narrative about fire and humanity.