The Blog

When I write fiction, I always start with place. Not consciously, actually, but I know my stories are going to take place in the South, usually in a small town in the South, because that’s where my creative sensibilities live. Sometimes other places interest me, and I imagine setting a story there, but my creative sensibilities say, “Nope. You know where we live.”

Such was the case this past summer when I visited Yellowstone National Park. The mountains, geysers, canyons, rivers, and lodge pole pines form a truly magnificent, other-worldly place, and I wanted to capture the spirit of that place in a story. But, you know what happened. Fortunately, somebody else’s creative sensibilities not only live in Yellowstone, they know how to capture the spirit perfectly.

Old Faithful Inn

On a tour of the awe-inspiring Old Faithful Inn, our guide mentioned that a few novels had been set in the park and some of them were available in the inn’s gift shop. Following the tour, I made a bee-line for the gift shop and discovered Linda Jacobs’ Summer of Fire. Set in 1988, when wild fires consumed more than half of Yellowstone, the novel tells the stories of a fire fighter, a helicopter pilot, and a park ranger brought together by the need to control the fires and their own needs to control parts of themselves.

Clare Chance, the firefighter, is a single mother from Houston who has just watched her co-worker and best friend die fighting an apartment-building fire. She comes to Yellowstone trying to lose the memories and fears from that tragedy, believing forest fires, while just as fierce, are less personal.

The helicopter pilot, Chris Deering, is a Vietnam veteran whose wife wants him to give up flying, but he can’t give up the adrenalin rush of the job. And Steve Haywood is a park ranger using alcohol to submerge his sorrow over losing his wife and child in a plane crash that he survived.

The characters’ involvement begins when Ranger Haywood is in Deering’s helicopter, trying to lower a canvas bucket into Yellowstone Lake to scoop water to drop on the fire as it burns closer to the lake and the village around it. Unexpected winds and an uncooperative bucket make raising the helicopter above the burning trees impossible, or so Steve thinks. Refusing to be in another crash, Steve jumps from the helicopter into the lake, just before Deering is forced to ditch the helicopter into the water and barely escapes as the machine sinks.

After another helicopter throws a horse collar to Deering and hauls him to shore, Clare spots Steve lying half in the water and half on the beach. She keeps him floating in the water to avoid the fire before the two make their way to the small Lake Hospital where Deering is being treated.

As weeks pass and the fires rage and retreat, relationships among the three also rage and retreat. At first Clare is attracted to Deering until she learns he’s married. Steve has his charms, but his excessive drinking makes him hard to get close to, except for the park manager who tells him he’ll have to choose between Yellowstone and the bottle. The death of a young firefighter nearly destroys Clare’s resolve to redeem herself, and her worries deepen when her teenage daughter joins her at the park.

And no matter what else is happening, the fires roar on.

In some ways, Summer of Fire reminds me of a war novel. The intensity of the times makes people do things they might otherwise not do. Also, the novel addresses issues of fire, particularly the “let burn” policy. Undoubtedly, Summer of Fire could not have happened anywhere except Yellowstone because the park is a significant part of the story.

On her website, Linda Jacobs says, “Once I saw Yellowstone, the lakes, the canyons, the geysers, my fate was sealed. There were stories here.” Indeed, there are stories at Yellowstone, and we readers are fortunate that Jacobs tells them so well.