Hotshot: A Life on Fire

A KIRKUS BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR“A beautiful reflection on justice, the environment, the self, and much more.”-George SaundersThe fierce debut memoir of a female firefighter, Hotshot navigates the personal and environmental dangers of wildland firefightingFrom 2000 to 2010, River Selby was a wildland firefighter whose given name was Anastasia.This is a memoir of that time in their life-of Ana, the struggles she encountered, and the constraints of what it means to be female-bodied in a male-dominated industry.An illuminating debut from a fierce new voice, Hotshot is a timely reckoning with both the personal and environmental dangers of wildland firefighting. By the time they were nineteen, Selby had been homeless, addicted to drugs, and sexually assaulted more than once.In a last-ditch effort to find direction, they applied to be a wildland firefighter.Two years later, they joined an elite class of specially trained wildland firefighters known as hotshots.Over the course of five fire seas