Thirteen-year-old Sam Castine is at summer camp while his mother is in rehab, but when the camp is evacuated ahead of a fast moving wildfire, he makes the mistake of going back for his phone, and finds himself left behind, disoriented, and running for his life, together with a girl, Delphy, from a different camp--finding an old jeep keeps them going, but in the wilds of Maine, there are only logging roads and the deadly crown fire is everywhere.

Excerpt: "[Lumbermen] are in such a hurry to get rich that they'll leave their grandchildren a desert. They cut and slash in every direction, and then fires come and the country is ruined. Our rivers depend upon the forests for water. The trees draw the rain; the leaves break it up and let it fall in mists and drippings; it seeps into the ground, and is held by roots. If the trees are destroyed the rain rushes off on the surface and floods the rivers....

A devastating and lyrical work of nonfiction, Young Men and Fire describes the events of August 5, 1949, when a crew of fifteen of the US Forest Service's elite airborne firefighters, the Smokejumpers, stepped into the sky above a remote forest fire in the Montana wilderness. Two hours after their jump, all but three of the men were dead or mortally burned. Haunted by these deaths for forty years, Norman Maclean puts together the scattered pieces...

Photographs and illustrations describe different types of forest fires, how they can start, and their impact on the people, animals, and landscape.

Examines the origins and dangers of forest fires and how we try to prevent them and stop them.

"When a fire engulfs an Oregon forest, a group of trapped hikers must find another way out"--

Presents wildfires as neither good nor bad but as part of the endless cycle of change in forests and grasslands.--