MALIBU BURNING

A writer offers stories of California residents caught in the flames of a deadly wildfire.

On Nov. 9, 2018, the Woolsey Fire spread from Simi Valley to Malibu, destroying 100,000 acres of land and forcing 250,000 people to evacuate. What debut author, actor, and longtime resident Kerbeck remembers of that day is “the terror of thinking you’re about to be burned alive in front of your kid.” His book, a collection of tales blending memoir, investigative journalism, and narrative, begins with his own harrowing account of the fire’s rapid descent toward his home. The author then goes on to reconstruct the stories of his neighbors. There are plenty of shocking close calls with “flaming embers”—one standout is the experience of Tanesha Lockhart, who had to “shelter in place” with the youths of a detention center. But Kerbeck also uses the residents’ recollections as a springboard to reach deep into the history of Malibu and the questions of liability surrounding California wildfires. Stars like Bob Dylan and Sean Penn make cameos, but what is more important to the author is the community of Malibu that exists at the edges of its multimillion-dollar homes: the Morra family, which struggled, ultimately in vain, to buy a fire engine dedicated to locals; Valerie Sklarevsky, a hippie activist who lived in a covered wagon; and the Gonzalezes, who built their own doomed, wooden home themselves. Throughout these and the other tales, the author deftly digs into the terror of that day, the deep connections these people felt to the land, and the varying factors that played a role in the Woolsey fire’s rapid development. His ample research allows him to makes surprising connections, linking the fire to the electric provider’s mismanagement and even possibly to nuclear testing in the 1950s while providing a thorough examination of the volunteer and Los Angeles County fire departments. Kerbeck writes about policy and history with the same urgency that he brings to cars engulfed in flames. And he focuses on just the right details—such as a high school production of Spring Awakening and a lost collection of airplane models—to give a robust and very human face to Malibu and the increasingly frequent dangers it faces.

An engrossing, thorough, and revealing portrait of a beloved beachside community confronting disaster.