Fire has always gripped our imaginations. To quote Mary Clearman Blew, It warms us, frightens us, and entertains us. In Forged in Fire, Blew and coeditor Phil Druker have assembled twenty gifted writers who explore the element from various perspectives.

Living as they do in a state that nearly every summer faces the threat and challenges of wildfire, Idaho writers are exceptionally well equipped to recount firsthand experiences. Featuring essays by both established and novice writers and including two prize-winning stories, Forged in Fire covers topics from escaping forest fires and smoke jumping, to fighting house fires and making campfires. The authors deal with human responses to fire - fear, courage, sadness - and the environmental response of regeneration.

As Americans grapple increasingly with the proliferation of forest fires and the environmental consequences, this collection has an especially timely resonance.

These dramatic, self-reflective, and descriptive essays represent new understandings of fire and fire awareness in the American West. - Andrew Gulliford, author of Sacred Objects and Sacred Places: Preserving Tribal Traditions

Mary Clearman Blew is the author of Writing Her Own Life: ImogeneWelch, Western Rural Schoolteacher. She resides in Moscow, Idaho. Phil Druker writes for general audiences in natural history, natural-resource management, earth science, and geology. He resides in Moscow, Idaho.

This book sponsored by the Idaho Humanities Council