The Wildfire Season

June M. Blurton is a retired speech/language pathologist.

It has been a quiet summer for firefighters in the small Yukon
settlement of Ross River—quiet until someone sets a fire deliberately.
At first, the fire seems to be under control. Then, without warning, it
roars to life and Miles and his crew must try to save the town. In the
path of the fire, guides are trying to fulfill a tourist’s dream of
shooting a bear, who is out to avenge the death of her cubs.

The fire is not Miles’s only worry. He cannot forget an earlier
experience that ended in tragedy. Nor can he forget that he ran away
from his pregnant girlfriend six years ago. Now, she and their daughter
have finally tracked him down.

The oddball characters are a lively bunch, living a rough-and-tumble
existence, but it is the descriptions of the fire and the dangers of
firefighting that make this novel such a fascinating read. The
author’s prose is somewhat repetitious, but he succeeds in bringing
the strands of the story together in a tension-filled finale.