Published May 2025 via Nancy Paulson Books
★★★★
Opal is a fourth-generation fire lookout—or she will be, now that she's turned twelve and can start learning the ropes for real. She's grown up in a fire tower in the Gila National Forest, living with her mother and grandmother. But Opal has a secret: she's afraid of fire. She'd rather go to school in town, in person, next year instead.
Fire lookout has long been on my list of dream jobs, ever since I read Philip Connors' Fire Season. Rose takes certain liberties here (among other things, as she observes in the author's note, Opal and her family wouldn't be living in a lookout tower year-round, and Opal wouldn't be living there at all), but those liberties are taken with a purpose, and the result is great. There's lots of detail about fire here, including the importance of letting some fires burn (because trying to stamp out every flame is what has led to recent megafires...), and Opal is altogether relatable. I read this in an evening (novels in verse go quickly) and would have kept reading.
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