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On the Burning Edge: A Fateful Fire and the Men Who Fought It
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY MEN’S JOURNAL • In the tradition of Sebastian Junger’s The Perfect Storm and Robert Kurson’s Shadow Divers comes a true and heartbreaking tale of courage, difficult decisions, and ultimate sacrifice. On the Burning Edge, by award-winning journalist and former wildland firefighter Kyle Dickman, is the definitive account of the Yarnell Hill Fire.
On June 28, 2013, a single bolt of lightning sparked an inferno that devoured more than eight thousand acres in northern Arizona. Twenty elite firefighters—the Granite Mountain Hotshots—walked together into the blaze, tools in their hands and emergency fire shelters on their hips. Only one of them walked out.
Dickman brings to the story a professional firefighter’s understanding of how wildfires ignite, how they spread, and how they are fought. He understands hotshots and their culture: the pain and glory of a rough and vital job, the brotherly bonds born of dangerous work. Drawing on dozens of interviews with officials, families of the fallen, and the lone survivor, he describes in vivid detail what it’s like to stand inside a raging fire—and shows how the increased population and decreased water supply of the American West guarantee that many more young men will step into harm’s way in the coming years.
Praise for On the Burning Edge
“What makes this book a tear-jerking classic is the seamless manner in which Dickman weaves a century of fire-management history into the fully realized stories of the men’s lives—the sweat, the adrenaline, the orange glow of fire within their aluminum shelters, and the chewing gum that hotshot Scott Norris left in the shower before telling his girlfriend, Heather, ‘I’ll take care of it later. I promise.’” — Outside
“Dickman offers a riveting account of a dangerous occupation and acts of nature most violent—and those who face both down.” — Library Journal
On June 28, 2013, a single bolt of lightning sparked an inferno that devoured more than eight thousand acres in northern Arizona. Twenty elite firefighters—the Granite Mountain Hotshots—walked together into the blaze, tools in their hands and emergency fire shelters on their hips. Only one of them walked out.
Dickman brings to the story a professional firefighter’s understanding of how wildfires ignite, how they spread, and how they are fought. He understands hotshots and their culture: the pain and glory of a rough and vital job, the brotherly bonds born of dangerous work. Drawing on dozens of interviews with officials, families of the fallen, and the lone survivor, he describes in vivid detail what it’s like to stand inside a raging fire—and shows how the increased population and decreased water supply of the American West guarantee that many more young men will step into harm’s way in the coming years.
Praise for On the Burning Edge
“What makes this book a tear-jerking classic is the seamless manner in which Dickman weaves a century of fire-management history into the fully realized stories of the men’s lives—the sweat, the adrenaline, the orange glow of fire within their aluminum shelters, and the chewing gum that hotshot Scott Norris left in the shower before telling his girlfriend, Heather, ‘I’ll take care of it later. I promise.’” — Outside
“Dickman offers a riveting account of a dangerous occupation and acts of nature most violent—and those who face both down.” — Library Journal
280 pages, Hardcover
First published May 5, 2015
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July 9, 2016
It’s that time of year, and appreciable portions of the west are ablaze. With fire season upon us, it seemed an appropriate time to revisit one of the worst wildland fire disasters in American history.
On June 28, 2013, in northern Arizona, lightning ignited a devastating wildfire that burned more than 8,000 acres. Men and equipment moved in to do battle. Residents of a nearby town prepared to evacuate. The fire feasted on dry fuel in the drought-ridden area. The area hadn’t burned for 45 years, and it was highly flammable. The wind, as always, played its tricks. Two days later, 19 members of the Granite Mountain Hotshots – a team of wildland firefighters stationed out of Prescott, Arizona – were overrun by the fire while attempting to get to a safe zone. The hotshots deployed their fire shelters, but the aluminum, silica, and fiberglass devices were no match for the intense, 2,000 degree heat. All of them perished.
(Like the servant of Job, one member of the team who had been acting as a lookout survived).
This is more than a story of young men dying in fire. It is a mystery. Shortly before their deaths, the Granite Mountain Hotshots had been standing “in the black”. That is, they were at a place that had already burned. They were safe there. The spot could not burn again. If they simply remained where they stood while the fire flared and jumped and advanced at tremendous speed, they would be with us still. If they made any other decisions than the one that got made, they would still be with us. If they made no decision at all...
Yet they left the black.
The order to leave, likely made by superintendent Eric Marsh, is the animating feature of the Yarnell Fire disaster. It is a deadly riddle that calls out to be solved, or at least puzzled over. Probably the chief failure of Kyle Dickman’s On the Burning Edge is that it does not realize this. Marsh’s decision is only fleetingly scrutinized in this unfocused and frustrating book.
At 265 pages of text, On the Burning Edge is pretty short. Almost two-thirds of its length is devoted to the lead-up to the fire. Dickman pays special attention to the formation of the Granite Mountain crew under Marsh. He takes you through the training and certification required of a hotshot crew. Hotshots – not to be confused with smokejumpers, who can parachute into action – are often referred to as “elite” units. However, as Dickman points out, qualifications are pretty basic, and abilities vary from crew to crew. Granite Mountain comes across as a physically fit and able group, with a controversial leader who one person described as a “bad-decisions, good-outcome guy”. With a sometimes plodding thoroughness, Dickman provides accounts of the various fires that Granite Mountain fought in the 2013 season.
In presenting the Granite Mountain team, Dickman chooses to hone in on only a few individuals. These chosen subjects get the lion’s share of the space, to the detriment of all the rest. One of the men Dickman follows isn’t even at the fateful Yarnell Fire; despite this, we get several in-depth scenes with him and his family. I am loathe to use the word “filler” in describing any book’s contents. It’s an imprecise term often overused by readers with short attention spans. In this case, I think it’s warranted. There is a lot of unnecessary padding at the start, and far too little actual substance at the end.
I am not ignorant of the journalistic process. I understand that in order to write something like this, you need sources. An author is naturally going to write more about the people who gave him or her access. Unfortunately, the result is an unbalanced narrative. The girlfriends of some of the hotshots (who I assume were willing to speak with Dickman) are given far more depth than most of the crew. In fact, some of the guys who died with Granite Mountain are only introduced at the fatal fire. This just doesn’t make any sense, narrative or otherwise.
Even the men Dickman writes about eludes us. He mistakes factoids with characterizations. We learn that one guy liked the movie Tommy Boy and another liked guns; what we don’t learn is what that contributes to who these men were.
Scattered throughout Granite Mountain’s story are interesting nuggets about the history of wildland firefighting. Gifford Pinchot and the Big Burn. Natural fire cycles verses fire suppression. This is important context, but Dickman never molds it into a position. There is no discussion about the wildland-urban interface, and how the encroachment of developers requires a massive subsidy that is sometimes paid in lives.
In the movie Backdraft, an arson investigator played by Robert De Niro explains to one of the Baldwin brothers that fire has a mind of its own. That’s not true. Fire is constrained by its own physics. Experienced wildland firefighters, aided by up-to-the-minute weather reports, can look at a fire and see the dangers before they unfold. How a fire runs faster uphill than down. How a fire will react to different types of fuel. How a shift in the wind can block an escape route. There is an inherent risk to fighting fires because fire is involved, and fire burns. But in terms of probability, firefighting is actually safer than more mundane occupations, such as garbage collection. This is due to our understanding of fire science.
When firefighters die in wildland blazes, it is typically due to human error. We see this time and again in lethal fires, whether it’s Mann Gulch in 1949 (covered by Norman Maclean in Young Men and Fire) or the South Canyon Fire of 1994 (covered by Norman Maclean’s son John, in Fire on the Mountain). Dickman recognizes this when he discusses the 1990 Dude Fire that killed six firefighters in Walk Moore Canyon. (The firefighters, apropos of nothing, were part of a convict crew). Humans are fallible, even those who are well trained. Under the duress of a seething, mushrooming inferno that is powerful enough to create its own weather system, poor decisions get made.
Despite this recognition, Dickman does not engage in any rigorous analysis of the fire scene. I’m not sure where this hesitation comes from. I sort of assume he refrained from any critique or judgment out of deference to the fallen. If so, he probably shouldn’t have undertaken this project to begin with.
I expected more from Dickman, who is a wildland firefighter himself. It surprises me that there isn’t a section in the book where he puts on a rucksack and goes to Yarnell to observe things with his own eyes. To walk in the footsteps of the doomed to see what they saw. To know the terrain. To understand their exertions as they tried to escape. This might have given him a crucial insight. A professional wildland firefighter tends to view ground with different eyes than you or me. A firefighter looks at a ridge and is unconsciously estimating how fast a fire might run along its spine. I look at the same ridge and get distracted by two bunnies humping.
There is a lot of material out there on Yarnell. There have been a couple of official investigations and at least one prominent independent one. There are also some good magazine articles about the disaster. Heck, Dickman wrote one of them for Outside magazine. (I recommend No Exit by Sean Flynn, written for Esquire). In terms of what else is out there on the topic, On the Burning Edge falls short.
In the wake of disaster, we are always trying to draw lessons. Most of the time, such attempts are futile. Not so with fires. The U.S. Forest Service, like the military, conducts staff rides at fatal fires in order to determine when, where, and how decision-making breaks down. This knowledge can be integrated into training and procedures so that the same mistakes don’t get repeated. The question of why Marsh left the black is imperative to an understanding of the Yarnell Fire. Dickman treats it as an afterthought.
On June 28, 2013, in northern Arizona, lightning ignited a devastating wildfire that burned more than 8,000 acres. Men and equipment moved in to do battle. Residents of a nearby town prepared to evacuate. The fire feasted on dry fuel in the drought-ridden area. The area hadn’t burned for 45 years, and it was highly flammable. The wind, as always, played its tricks. Two days later, 19 members of the Granite Mountain Hotshots – a team of wildland firefighters stationed out of Prescott, Arizona – were overrun by the fire while attempting to get to a safe zone. The hotshots deployed their fire shelters, but the aluminum, silica, and fiberglass devices were no match for the intense, 2,000 degree heat. All of them perished.
(Like the servant of Job, one member of the team who had been acting as a lookout survived).
This is more than a story of young men dying in fire. It is a mystery. Shortly before their deaths, the Granite Mountain Hotshots had been standing “in the black”. That is, they were at a place that had already burned. They were safe there. The spot could not burn again. If they simply remained where they stood while the fire flared and jumped and advanced at tremendous speed, they would be with us still. If they made any other decisions than the one that got made, they would still be with us. If they made no decision at all...
Yet they left the black.
The order to leave, likely made by superintendent Eric Marsh, is the animating feature of the Yarnell Fire disaster. It is a deadly riddle that calls out to be solved, or at least puzzled over. Probably the chief failure of Kyle Dickman’s On the Burning Edge is that it does not realize this. Marsh’s decision is only fleetingly scrutinized in this unfocused and frustrating book.
At 265 pages of text, On the Burning Edge is pretty short. Almost two-thirds of its length is devoted to the lead-up to the fire. Dickman pays special attention to the formation of the Granite Mountain crew under Marsh. He takes you through the training and certification required of a hotshot crew. Hotshots – not to be confused with smokejumpers, who can parachute into action – are often referred to as “elite” units. However, as Dickman points out, qualifications are pretty basic, and abilities vary from crew to crew. Granite Mountain comes across as a physically fit and able group, with a controversial leader who one person described as a “bad-decisions, good-outcome guy”. With a sometimes plodding thoroughness, Dickman provides accounts of the various fires that Granite Mountain fought in the 2013 season.
In presenting the Granite Mountain team, Dickman chooses to hone in on only a few individuals. These chosen subjects get the lion’s share of the space, to the detriment of all the rest. One of the men Dickman follows isn’t even at the fateful Yarnell Fire; despite this, we get several in-depth scenes with him and his family. I am loathe to use the word “filler” in describing any book’s contents. It’s an imprecise term often overused by readers with short attention spans. In this case, I think it’s warranted. There is a lot of unnecessary padding at the start, and far too little actual substance at the end.
I am not ignorant of the journalistic process. I understand that in order to write something like this, you need sources. An author is naturally going to write more about the people who gave him or her access. Unfortunately, the result is an unbalanced narrative. The girlfriends of some of the hotshots (who I assume were willing to speak with Dickman) are given far more depth than most of the crew. In fact, some of the guys who died with Granite Mountain are only introduced at the fatal fire. This just doesn’t make any sense, narrative or otherwise.
Even the men Dickman writes about eludes us. He mistakes factoids with characterizations. We learn that one guy liked the movie Tommy Boy and another liked guns; what we don’t learn is what that contributes to who these men were.
Scattered throughout Granite Mountain’s story are interesting nuggets about the history of wildland firefighting. Gifford Pinchot and the Big Burn. Natural fire cycles verses fire suppression. This is important context, but Dickman never molds it into a position. There is no discussion about the wildland-urban interface, and how the encroachment of developers requires a massive subsidy that is sometimes paid in lives.
In the movie Backdraft, an arson investigator played by Robert De Niro explains to one of the Baldwin brothers that fire has a mind of its own. That’s not true. Fire is constrained by its own physics. Experienced wildland firefighters, aided by up-to-the-minute weather reports, can look at a fire and see the dangers before they unfold. How a fire runs faster uphill than down. How a fire will react to different types of fuel. How a shift in the wind can block an escape route. There is an inherent risk to fighting fires because fire is involved, and fire burns. But in terms of probability, firefighting is actually safer than more mundane occupations, such as garbage collection. This is due to our understanding of fire science.
When firefighters die in wildland blazes, it is typically due to human error. We see this time and again in lethal fires, whether it’s Mann Gulch in 1949 (covered by Norman Maclean in Young Men and Fire) or the South Canyon Fire of 1994 (covered by Norman Maclean’s son John, in Fire on the Mountain). Dickman recognizes this when he discusses the 1990 Dude Fire that killed six firefighters in Walk Moore Canyon. (The firefighters, apropos of nothing, were part of a convict crew). Humans are fallible, even those who are well trained. Under the duress of a seething, mushrooming inferno that is powerful enough to create its own weather system, poor decisions get made.
Despite this recognition, Dickman does not engage in any rigorous analysis of the fire scene. I’m not sure where this hesitation comes from. I sort of assume he refrained from any critique or judgment out of deference to the fallen. If so, he probably shouldn’t have undertaken this project to begin with.
I expected more from Dickman, who is a wildland firefighter himself. It surprises me that there isn’t a section in the book where he puts on a rucksack and goes to Yarnell to observe things with his own eyes. To walk in the footsteps of the doomed to see what they saw. To know the terrain. To understand their exertions as they tried to escape. This might have given him a crucial insight. A professional wildland firefighter tends to view ground with different eyes than you or me. A firefighter looks at a ridge and is unconsciously estimating how fast a fire might run along its spine. I look at the same ridge and get distracted by two bunnies humping.
There is a lot of material out there on Yarnell. There have been a couple of official investigations and at least one prominent independent one. There are also some good magazine articles about the disaster. Heck, Dickman wrote one of them for Outside magazine. (I recommend No Exit by Sean Flynn, written for Esquire). In terms of what else is out there on the topic, On the Burning Edge falls short.
In the wake of disaster, we are always trying to draw lessons. Most of the time, such attempts are futile. Not so with fires. The U.S. Forest Service, like the military, conducts staff rides at fatal fires in order to determine when, where, and how decision-making breaks down. This knowledge can be integrated into training and procedures so that the same mistakes don’t get repeated. The question of why Marsh left the black is imperative to an understanding of the Yarnell Fire. Dickman treats it as an afterthought.
April 17, 2018
This is a great, if heartbreaking, read. Dickman does a wonderful job of dropping you right into the heart of wild land fire fighting, I could almost feel the heat.
September 6, 2018
After reading about the Esperanza Fire, I wanted to explore more about wildfires and their history in the United States. Most of the books that have been written about fires involve those that caused deaths, and the next book I found was no exception. “On The Burning Edge” tells the story of the Yarnell Hills fire, which caused the death of 19 wilderness firefighters. (I’ll also be reviewing another book on this same fire in a few days.) I knew this wouldn’t be a happy ending.
Unlike the Esperanza fire, the Yarnell Hills fire was caused by a lightning strike. I don’t know why that made me feel a bit better, but it did. I was relieved that there wasn’t an arsonist involved in this. But it was still a terrible, terrible day. I was already familiar with smoke jumpers - I actually know a guy who used to be one - and when they die the part of me that is afraid of heights just kind of shivers and nods and cries. The team of firefighters in this case was a hotshot team. Instead of jumping in, they come in on the ground and do the brutally hard work of eliminating vegetation and fuel in an area wide enough to keep a fire from spreading past the line. Their equipment includes chainsaws and picks and they hike in with their own water. They also, in the United States, use portable shields that in some cases can save lives. The Granite Mountain Hotshot team, headquartered in Prescott Arizona, used theirs. Unfortunately, the circumstances were wrong and the shelters could not save them.
“On The Burning Edge” tells the story of that whole fateful summer, from the hiring of the rookies on the crew to the aftermath of the fire. Dickman is a firefighter himself, and his expertise came in handy as he explains how the training for these crews work and how they differ from structural firefighters. He clearly conjures the heat and awful environment in which the Granite Mountain team worked. He also rounds them out and lets us see the people they were outside of their coats and boots. Dickman’s writing talent made the book fly by, and even though the story is tragic he brings out many moments of levity right up until the end.
Read this for insight into firefighting - which is only going to get more intense over time - and to understand more about what they and their families sacrifice. Five of five stars.
Unlike the Esperanza fire, the Yarnell Hills fire was caused by a lightning strike. I don’t know why that made me feel a bit better, but it did. I was relieved that there wasn’t an arsonist involved in this. But it was still a terrible, terrible day. I was already familiar with smoke jumpers - I actually know a guy who used to be one - and when they die the part of me that is afraid of heights just kind of shivers and nods and cries. The team of firefighters in this case was a hotshot team. Instead of jumping in, they come in on the ground and do the brutally hard work of eliminating vegetation and fuel in an area wide enough to keep a fire from spreading past the line. Their equipment includes chainsaws and picks and they hike in with their own water. They also, in the United States, use portable shields that in some cases can save lives. The Granite Mountain Hotshot team, headquartered in Prescott Arizona, used theirs. Unfortunately, the circumstances were wrong and the shelters could not save them.
“On The Burning Edge” tells the story of that whole fateful summer, from the hiring of the rookies on the crew to the aftermath of the fire. Dickman is a firefighter himself, and his expertise came in handy as he explains how the training for these crews work and how they differ from structural firefighters. He clearly conjures the heat and awful environment in which the Granite Mountain team worked. He also rounds them out and lets us see the people they were outside of their coats and boots. Dickman’s writing talent made the book fly by, and even though the story is tragic he brings out many moments of levity right up until the end.
Read this for insight into firefighting - which is only going to get more intense over time - and to understand more about what they and their families sacrifice. Five of five stars.
May 16, 2015
On the Burning Edge by Kyle Dickman is a highly recommended, in depth look at the 20 Granite Mountain Hotshots of Prescott, AZ., and the Yarnell, AZ., wildfire that claimed 19 of their lives.
Dickman, a former hotshot, spent five years fighting wildfires in California. His insider's knowledge and viewpoint give us information about the group and how they train and interact. While providing the information on a brief history of wildfire firefighting teams, and how a hotshot team trains and works fighting wildfires, he focuses mainly on the Granite Mountain Hotshots. He then gives us a well-researched inside glimpse at each of the members of the team. Dickman carefully covers each member of the crew and even includes their last text messages sent to loved ones.
The wildfire in Yarnell was sparked by a lightning bolt and quickly turned into an inferno that eventually devoured more than eight thousand acres in northern Arizona. Anyone who has ever seen a wildfire take off will understand the terror and unpredictability of a wildfire. Those of us who have done so, have also watched and applauded the dedicated crews coming in to fight those fires. While the actual firefighting portion of the book may seem scant, On the Burning Edge is a memorable and heartbreaking account of the men who fought the fire.
I remember vividly when living in the west seeing a lightning strike hit a nearby mountain and then almost immediately seeing smoke arise from the mountain. It is a horrifying feeling to watch a fire take off and know your family could be in the path of a wildfire. Furthermore, these fires seemed to be a yearly occurrence. So many people across the USA depend on the hotshots and crews of dedicated firefighters from across the West to come in and fight the fires. (A shout out to those flying helicopters and dumping flame retardant on the fires too.)
Dickman does a good job presenting the information and telling the story of the tragic event. It is also a story of warning and caution. With the increased population and well publicized decrease in the water supply in the West, there are certainly going to be an increase of fires that threaten populated areas and more young men will be in harm’s way fighting the fires.
Disclosure: My Kindle edition was courtesy of Random House for review purposes.
Dickman, a former hotshot, spent five years fighting wildfires in California. His insider's knowledge and viewpoint give us information about the group and how they train and interact. While providing the information on a brief history of wildfire firefighting teams, and how a hotshot team trains and works fighting wildfires, he focuses mainly on the Granite Mountain Hotshots. He then gives us a well-researched inside glimpse at each of the members of the team. Dickman carefully covers each member of the crew and even includes their last text messages sent to loved ones.
The wildfire in Yarnell was sparked by a lightning bolt and quickly turned into an inferno that eventually devoured more than eight thousand acres in northern Arizona. Anyone who has ever seen a wildfire take off will understand the terror and unpredictability of a wildfire. Those of us who have done so, have also watched and applauded the dedicated crews coming in to fight those fires. While the actual firefighting portion of the book may seem scant, On the Burning Edge is a memorable and heartbreaking account of the men who fought the fire.
I remember vividly when living in the west seeing a lightning strike hit a nearby mountain and then almost immediately seeing smoke arise from the mountain. It is a horrifying feeling to watch a fire take off and know your family could be in the path of a wildfire. Furthermore, these fires seemed to be a yearly occurrence. So many people across the USA depend on the hotshots and crews of dedicated firefighters from across the West to come in and fight the fires. (A shout out to those flying helicopters and dumping flame retardant on the fires too.)
Dickman does a good job presenting the information and telling the story of the tragic event. It is also a story of warning and caution. With the increased population and well publicized decrease in the water supply in the West, there are certainly going to be an increase of fires that threaten populated areas and more young men will be in harm’s way fighting the fires.
Disclosure: My Kindle edition was courtesy of Random House for review purposes.
May 14, 2015
I won this as a goodreads first reads giveaway. I have an ARC. due to the instructions on my ARC I cannot write a review until it is released to the public. So my review of this book will come at that time.I read this book last month but could not write a review until it was officially out in the stores. Two years ago on June 13th the area of Yarnell Arizona made national news. An enormous fire engulfed the area. It all started with a lightening bolt. Within a couple days 19 firemen were dead. They were known as the "hotshots" They specialized in forest fires. of the 20 hotshots only one survived. This book describes what happened during this tragic time. There are interviews with witnesses. Many of the hotshot's lives are described. Many of these men were just starting families that tragically lost their husbands, daddies. This is a hard book to read since it talks of real life men who lost their lives. Part of the book also talks of other fires throughout history that cost many lives. So part of the book is about the 19 firemen who lost their lives, what they did to try and survive. the interviews of witnesses. It can be a bit of dry reading in parts. but gives a lot of information about this tragic event that happened in June of 2013.
September 2, 2015
This was a well written book. I wish he would have elaborated on all of the 19 firefighters and their personalities, as it seemed he just focused on a few. Also, I would have liked pictures of all of the firefighters.
August 24, 2019
Amazing Story
Wow! What a book. First, a very informative and Technical explaination of what it takes to prepare and fight huge forest fires. Then a very exciting story of a real incident. My prayers are always with first responders of every department. Great book.
Wow! What a book. First, a very informative and Technical explaination of what it takes to prepare and fight huge forest fires. Then a very exciting story of a real incident. My prayers are always with first responders of every department. Great book.
July 27, 2015
Little slow in spots early on but does justice to Granite Mountain.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 12, 2023
I want to rate this book 5 stars and 2 stars simultaneously.
"On the Burning Edge," like all books about Yarnell Hill - or even wildfire fatalities in general - is a book with a purpose. There is one clear and guiding question that matters: why did the 19 firefighters step out of the safe area they were located and choose to enter a dense, brushy tinderbox as the blaze approached? Dickman flags this question from the very beginning, and the narrative structure of the book is designed to answer it... but by the end, we lose any attempt to grapple with this question.
I think this book does two things well. First, the book is a /great/ introduction to some of the core elements of wildfire management. For instance, it's probably the smoothest and most approachable introduction I've seen to the National Interagency Fire Centre and its various structures. The book is also eminently readable in general, and I was through the ~260 pages in two days. It's likely a book on fire that's easily appreciable by the general public.
The other thing the book does well, to a degree, is understanding that the story is only half located in the fateful moment. The book follows the Granite Mountain Hotshots through their formation and the earlier fires of the season, understanding that the answers to why they "left the black" (the safe area) on that fateful day rest in understanding who they are and what drives them as people.
Unfortunately, we never really get a good answer to that core question: why /did/ they leave the black? For reasons that escape me - other than, perhaps, a rush to publish - any investigation of /why/ is relegated to only a few pages of the Epilogue. We get no substantive engagement with the post-fire investigations (other than allusions to them being controversial), and a weak, cursory, and almost conspiracy-adjacent exploration of the fact that many different explanatory stories exist.
It's frustrating. Dickman understands more than most what question matters, and he can tell the story better than most other fire writers. But, in abandoning the question that matters, we're left with a much less useful contribution, as engaging of a read as it was.
"On the Burning Edge," like all books about Yarnell Hill - or even wildfire fatalities in general - is a book with a purpose. There is one clear and guiding question that matters: why did the 19 firefighters step out of the safe area they were located and choose to enter a dense, brushy tinderbox as the blaze approached? Dickman flags this question from the very beginning, and the narrative structure of the book is designed to answer it... but by the end, we lose any attempt to grapple with this question.
I think this book does two things well. First, the book is a /great/ introduction to some of the core elements of wildfire management. For instance, it's probably the smoothest and most approachable introduction I've seen to the National Interagency Fire Centre and its various structures. The book is also eminently readable in general, and I was through the ~260 pages in two days. It's likely a book on fire that's easily appreciable by the general public.
The other thing the book does well, to a degree, is understanding that the story is only half located in the fateful moment. The book follows the Granite Mountain Hotshots through their formation and the earlier fires of the season, understanding that the answers to why they "left the black" (the safe area) on that fateful day rest in understanding who they are and what drives them as people.
Unfortunately, we never really get a good answer to that core question: why /did/ they leave the black? For reasons that escape me - other than, perhaps, a rush to publish - any investigation of /why/ is relegated to only a few pages of the Epilogue. We get no substantive engagement with the post-fire investigations (other than allusions to them being controversial), and a weak, cursory, and almost conspiracy-adjacent exploration of the fact that many different explanatory stories exist.
It's frustrating. Dickman understands more than most what question matters, and he can tell the story better than most other fire writers. But, in abandoning the question that matters, we're left with a much less useful contribution, as engaging of a read as it was.
November 30, 2020
Kyle Dickman's perspective of the Yarnell Hill fire which killed 19 Granite Mountain Hotshots, since he is a former hotshot himself, set a slightly higher bar than perhaps this book deserved. He didn't reach high enough for what he is capable of reaching.
It's not a bad book. It's an average book. I learned things about a few people involved in this story, but there is so much that was overlooked.
This is a book about context. It sets the scene for what we know about the men who comprised the organization in the 2013 fire season. He makes a few of them human. We know who Eric Marsh, Jesse Steed, Chris McKenzie and Brendan McDonough are. The rest of the men become minor characters, sadly.
I would have loved to have seen this through Dickman's eyes retracing the footsteps of what happened to these men. Instead, he regurgitates the same timeline as the official reports, but never gives us critical analysis.
You will benefit from this book if this is your introduction to wildland firefighting or Yarnell Hill. There is enough here to introduce you to a whole new world. If you are a former wildland firefighter (Type 1 Hotshot, Type II, helatack or Smokejumper, you will be frustrated by this read.
Remember what I said earlier - it's not a bad book. Not by any means. Dickman is a capable writer and does an exceptional job at putting words on paper. As a subject matter expert - he's holding something back.
Perhaps he could have done better with a longer passage of time. This came out not too long after the Yarnell Hill Fire, and perhaps the wounds were still too raw.
It's not a bad book. It's an average book. I learned things about a few people involved in this story, but there is so much that was overlooked.
This is a book about context. It sets the scene for what we know about the men who comprised the organization in the 2013 fire season. He makes a few of them human. We know who Eric Marsh, Jesse Steed, Chris McKenzie and Brendan McDonough are. The rest of the men become minor characters, sadly.
I would have loved to have seen this through Dickman's eyes retracing the footsteps of what happened to these men. Instead, he regurgitates the same timeline as the official reports, but never gives us critical analysis.
You will benefit from this book if this is your introduction to wildland firefighting or Yarnell Hill. There is enough here to introduce you to a whole new world. If you are a former wildland firefighter (Type 1 Hotshot, Type II, helatack or Smokejumper, you will be frustrated by this read.
Remember what I said earlier - it's not a bad book. Not by any means. Dickman is a capable writer and does an exceptional job at putting words on paper. As a subject matter expert - he's holding something back.
Perhaps he could have done better with a longer passage of time. This came out not too long after the Yarnell Hill Fire, and perhaps the wounds were still too raw.
February 23, 2020
This is the story of wildfire-firefighters who are sometimes called Hotshots. The author writes about the formation of wild-fire-fighters as a branch of the US Forest Service and their existence in every state or region. The author of this book spent some time as a Hotshot and here also discusses various techniques of fighting a fire in the middle of the deserts of Arizona and how very different they are from structural firefighting. But this is also the story of the Granite Mountain Hotshots, a team of firefighters who faced the ultimate test of surviving a wildfire.
I liked this book. I liked reading about the fires and the ways that they fight them. In fact some of this firefighting reading was actually overly too technical. For example he writes about how the weather and the fire interact with each other and then the barometric pressure gets to be too high which somehow affects the fire... I got lost in the technicalities of meteorology. It is for this reason that I am giving this book three stars. There was a lot of good things in this book that I had never heard of before though, too. Like one fire in Wisconsin which interacted with the weather and particles in the ground so that when it rained, it rained glass. Lots of interesting stuff in here, and of course the story of the Granite Mountain Hotshots.
I liked this book. I liked reading about the fires and the ways that they fight them. In fact some of this firefighting reading was actually overly too technical. For example he writes about how the weather and the fire interact with each other and then the barometric pressure gets to be too high which somehow affects the fire... I got lost in the technicalities of meteorology. It is for this reason that I am giving this book three stars. There was a lot of good things in this book that I had never heard of before though, too. Like one fire in Wisconsin which interacted with the weather and particles in the ground so that when it rained, it rained glass. Lots of interesting stuff in here, and of course the story of the Granite Mountain Hotshots.
November 3, 2024
An emotionally draining book. Dickman was a former firefighter and I think that adds to the reading experience. He writes a lot about the training and what it takes to do this incredibly dangerous job, which I throughly appreciated. The last couple of chapters were really difficult to read despite having already known how this tragic story ends. In reading so much set up of the job itself and also about some of the men and their loved ones made the impact more powerful. That being said, I do think that the exact timeline of the book was a little inconsistent, and I wish that more of the 19 men (all of them!) had been written about rather than just the handful. I think it’s important that some of their stories were told, but all of their stories should have been told.
November 2, 2019
Dickman really dug deeper into the background of wild land firefighting which I found riveting. Every first responder deserves the upmost gratitude and respect, I feel Dickman shed so much light on hotshotting. An incredibly labor intensive, mentally exhausting, and heroic job that most people do not know much about.
I watched the movie several years ago, but I'm so thankful a co-worker allowed me to borrow this. (I had no idea they had a book about it as well.) I feel so appreciative for the men and women who stand toe to toe with wildfires willing to sacrifice everything. Although what happened on Yarnell Hill will always remain unknown, I am certain that these men are heroes.
I watched the movie several years ago, but I'm so thankful a co-worker allowed me to borrow this. (I had no idea they had a book about it as well.) I feel so appreciative for the men and women who stand toe to toe with wildfires willing to sacrifice everything. Although what happened on Yarnell Hill will always remain unknown, I am certain that these men are heroes.
June 21, 2017
If you can't feel the heat & smell the smoke while reading this story of the Granite Mountain Hotshots who fell fleeing the flames of the Yarnell Hill Fire in 2013, you're not trying.
Still--I'm hoping John McLean turns his formidable writing chops loose on this tragedy, and offers more analysis and explanation as to WHY Yarnell Mountain happened, and how future hotshot teams can avoid a similar fate.
Still--I'm hoping John McLean turns his formidable writing chops loose on this tragedy, and offers more analysis and explanation as to WHY Yarnell Mountain happened, and how future hotshot teams can avoid a similar fate.
October 6, 2018
Not sure why I didn't like this more, though it may have been the narrator as I listened to it on Audible. He didn't do a poor job, necessarily, but I felt my attention waning quite a bit. Fascinating information about the technical aspects of wildfires and how modern efforts have actually made things more dangerous in many ways. The final section, discussing the central event of the story, is compelling and heartrending. More so than I expected.
July 24, 2020
Great....I learned a lot about the giant blaze in 2013, and about wildfires in general. A lot of considerations go into fighting them that I wouldn't have thought of. This was an exciting read-hard to put down.
Two criticisms: (1) some of the terminology was hard to understand for a non-firefighter (2) The names started to get confusing after a while. A index at the back would have been helpful
Two criticisms: (1) some of the terminology was hard to understand for a non-firefighter (2) The names started to get confusing after a while. A index at the back would have been helpful
October 7, 2025
I really liked this. Because Kyle Dickman also used to be a hotshot, he was able to write great descriptions of fire behavior and wildland firefighting tactics. He also had some good insights into why Granite Mountain did what they did.
Of the three books I've read about Yarnell Hill, this one was the most clear-eyed about the Granite Mountain Hotshots, neither valorizing nor demonizing them, just portraying them as human beings with faults and virtues.
Of the three books I've read about Yarnell Hill, this one was the most clear-eyed about the Granite Mountain Hotshots, neither valorizing nor demonizing them, just portraying them as human beings with faults and virtues.
July 20, 2017
I originally read the article Dickman wrote in Outside and was fascinated. He tries very hard to replicate the writing style of Krakauer, and probably did a good job if I hadn't just finished Young Men and Fire by Norman Maclean right before. Maclean's writing left something to be desired with Dickman's prose.
February 8, 2018
very informative. I watched the new movie Only The Brave(which is based on this disaster) and was intrigued so decided to pick up this book. There is some science etc but its in language I got and the history of wildfire management as well as historic fires that shaped it was very interesting. My hats off to these heroes and all who fight the fires in this nation
March 10, 2018
Truly a tragic story, but the book is both informative and interesting. The book provides an overview of the daily routine and responsibilities of a group of Arizona hotshots during fire season. It also introduces us to the hotshot crew, their personalities, their hopes and dreams. I was surprised, already knowing the ending, how moved I was by what transpired on that final day and afterward.
March 7, 2025
This book was very well done. Reading about the disaster at the end was brutal! This tragedy was truly heartbreaking and so hard to read. Painfully sad! But I learned a ton reading this and since we have a friend who fights wildfires with the hot shots, I feel like I understand his job and their family life so much better now.
April 13, 2018
Gripping, funny, human, and moving. Excellent narrative of the Yarnell Hill fire in 2013. Having read both this and Young Men and Fire, there are many lines of comparison, but this story is probably more compelling since it happened so recently and in an much closer area.
May 25, 2020
A heartfelt recount over the loss of nineteen Hotshots in the 2013 Arizona Yarnell fire. The book is engaging and well-paced. The vivid imagery of the fires really helps readers visualize the intensity and danger behind the work of the wildland firefighters.
3.5 stars from me.
3.5 stars from me.
January 16, 2021
This one was hard for me to read, as my son works as a smoke jumper, and did time on hot shot crews. I cried my way through it. The author did a pretty good job staying dispassionate and nonjudgmental. Just writing the review reminds me of that awful fire.
July 29, 2021
Such a sad story. Makes me want to watch the movie that I think they made about it. I wish it had focused more on the time right before the fire. It focused a lot on previous fires and I had a hard time staying focused on the story while listening.
June 26, 2017
A follow up to a book I read earlier this year. A good overview of this tragedy and the people involved.
November 28, 2017
I loved this book. It is well researched, and I feel like it did this story and these boys justice. It reads like fiction, and I couldn't put it down.
May 10, 2018
Really well written with a pretty objective viewpoint on what is a sensitive subject.
July 26, 2018
I found this book an excellent written and emotional story of a tragedy. We must never forget 19 Granite Mountain hotshots.
September 26, 2019
Intense
Intense, I couldn't put it down. I read the piece in Outside when it was published. Very well told, unbelievable.
Intense, I couldn't put it down. I read the piece in Outside when it was published. Very well told, unbelievable.
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