In this gripping work of narrative nonfiction, journalist John Vaillant introduces readers to the unpredictable nature of modern wildfires using the Fort McMurray fire in Alberta, Canada during May of 2016 as his chief illustrative example. Beginning at the beginning, Vallant first describes the rise of the fossil fuel industry in Alberta, its deep investment in the tar sands of Fort McMurray (aka “Fort McMoney”), and the astonishing technical aspects of the bitumen extraction process, replete with 3 story high dump trucks. Then, drawing on interviews with Fort McMurray’s residents and employing a thriller writer’s pace, Vaillant outlines in harrowing detail the start of the 2016 fire and its omnivorous appetite as it moved through the city, necessitating the evacuation of over 88,000 residents in a matter of hours and causing upwards of $10 billion in damages. The third and final part of the book outlines the oil industry’s century-long complacency toward CO2 emissions, and its part in propelling recent fire disasters.
The descriptions of the community of Fort McMurray will fascinate armchair anthropologists, while the descriptions of the extraction processes will satisfy anyone who pauses with childlike wonder to watch construction equipment at work. And the description of the remarkable intensity of the fire itself, one with powers to vaporize entire homes, will morbidly enthrall. Fire Weather was a finalist for the National Book Award in 2023, and this account of the interplay between humans and fire is top shelf nonfiction.
-Laurel, Reference
