Review: "Hotshot" by River Selby

Hotshot by River Selby
Published August 2025 via Atlantic Monthly Press
★★★★

This may have been the exact moment I fell in love with being a hotshot. Burning was like entering an alternate dimension. My shirt was drenched but I hadn't noticed myself sweating. The drip torch became an extension of my arm, fire a liquid expelled by my body. There was no pain. I'd been totally focused, consumed like branches alchemized from solid to smoke. I was cleansed. (loc. 672*)

Selby fell into firefighting almost by accident—but it stuck, and what followed was years in and out of seasonal work, in the wild, on the fireline. Firefighting was (still is) an industry dominated by cis White men, and Selby did not fit the mold; sometimes it was possible to forget that and just be a firefighter, and sometimes the reminders came thick and fast that some of the people on the crew wanted a crew that was exclusively firemen.

I've said it before and expect I'll say it again in the not too distant future: in another life, I want to be a wildland firefighter. In the meantime, though, I'll just keep ploughing through memoir after memoir as they turn up. And what I'm learning from memoirs on the subject is this: Wildland firefighting has always been behind the times in the US; it has always focused on suppression despite centuries of evidence that some amount of fire can be a regeneration tool. And wildland firefighting is falling ever more behind the times as the effects of climate change accelerate and fires burn bigger and hotter than ever before. As Jordan Thomas does in When It All Burns, Selby dives into both past and present, excavating history to trace the path of firefighting, mismanagement, and inadequate stewardship.

Leaving was my answer to everything. (loc. 2401)

Though it is of course the same history, the tone of the books is strikingly different. While Thomas felt out of place at times for being an academic who took to firefighting as a side gig (for money and for research), once he proved himself, he was any other guy on the crew; for Selby, firefighting was a lifeline out of a traumatic upbringing, and there was never going to be the option to be "any other guy" on the crew. It's a painful read at times, but a raw and valuable one. Recommended to those interested in climate change, gender politics, fire, and/or more generally memoir.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.

*Quotes are from an ARC and may not be final.