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Book Reviewed by:The fierce debut memoir of a female firefighter, Hotshot navigates the personal and environmental dangers of wildland firefighting.
From 2000 to 2010, River Selby was a wildland firefighter whose given name was Anastasia. This is a memoir of that time in their life—of Ana, the struggles she encountered, and the contours of what it meant to be female-bodied in a male-dominated profession.
By the time they were 19, Selby had been homeless, addicted to drugs, and sexually assaulted more than once. In a last-ditch effort to find direction, they applied to be a wildland firefighter. Soon immersed in the world of firefighting and its arcana—from specialized tools named for the fire pioneers who invented them, to the back-breaking labor of racing against time to create firebreaks—Selby began to find an internal balance. Then, after two years of ragtag contract firefighting, Selby joined an elite class of specially trained wildland firefighters known as hotshots.
Over the course of five fire seasons, Selby delves into the world of the people—almost entirely men—who risk their lives to fight and sometimes prevent wildfires. Marked out in a sea of machismo, Selby was simultaneously hyper visible and invisible, and Hotshot deftly parses the odd mix of camaraderie and rampant sexism they experienced on their fire crews, and how, when challenged, it resulted in a violent closing of ranks that excluded them from the work they'd come to love. Drawing on years of firsthand experience on the frontlines of fire, followed by years of research into the science and history of fire, Hotshot also reckons with our fraught stewardship of the land—how federal fire policy is maladapted to the realities of fire-prone landscapes and how it has led to ever more severe fire seasons.
Hotshot is a work of intimacy and authority, nimbly merging a personal journey of reinvention and self-acceptance with expert insight into the textured history of ecological systems and Indigenous land tending, the modern practices that have led to their imbalance, and the people who fight fire.
Chapter 3
Deploy
"Firefighters must never rely on fire shelters. Instead, they depend on well-defined and pre-located escape routes and safety zones. However, if the need for shelter deployment should ever arise, it is imperative that firefighters know how to deploy and use the fire shelter." —Six Minutes for Safety, National Wildfire Coordinating Group Publication
I'd first heard the term "Shake n' Bake" applied to fire shelters back on the contract crew. The guys on Solar Hotshots used the same gruesome nickname, but as a verb. As we drove up into the foothills for our final day of training one of them said we were "going to Shake n' Bake." The nickname rendered death abstract; a joke rather than a possibility. None of us wanted to believe we would ever have to use a fire shelter for protection, but they have saved over seven hundred lives since the 1970s. Fire shelters resemble flimsy silver pup tents: layers of silica and aluminum strong enough to protect us from ambient heat, ...
What are you reading this week? (8/14/2025)
I'm about to finish Hotshot by River Selby about being a woman on the wildfire brigades. Then I'm going to start either Endling by Maria Reva or One Boat by Jonathan Buckley as I explore the B...
-Anne_Glasgow
Author River Selby was just 19 years old and at loose ends when a friend convinced them to apply for a job as a wildland firefighter. For the next seven years, they spent their summers on fire crews throughout the western United States: two years as a contract firefighter responsible for mopping up after an area burned through, four years as a hotshot (an elite firefighter who works in direct contact with active fires), and one year as part of a helicopter crew. Hotshot: A Life on Fire is a memoir of Selby's experiences from that part of their life, both on and off the fire line. Selby's writing throughout is beautiful and engaging. Selby's numerous close calls certainly send the reader’s pulse pounding, but their descriptions also emphasize the grime and drudgery that make up the bulk of a wildland firefighter's routine. They were often dispatched to a blaze for weeks at a time with little respite, sleeping on the ground, eating MREs, and remaining sweat- and soot-stained for the length of their deployment. They clearly illustrate that firefighting is far from glamorous work...continued
Full Review
(766 words)
(Reviewed by Kim Kovacs).
George Saunders, Booker Prize-winning and #1 New York Times bestselling author of Lincoln in the Bardo
What a wonderful, compassionate, sharply observed, beautifully researched, open-hearted book. Selby has lived a big, courageous life, and that largesse is evident on every page, in the form of the rigor and curiosity of the narrative voice. Ostensibly about fire-fighting, Hotshot turns out to be a beautiful reflection on justice, the environment, the self, and much more. Luis Alberto Urrea, Pulitzer Prize-finalist and New York Times bestselling author of Good Night, Irene
River Selby is the real deal. A writer who seems fearless, who is honest and fierce—and this stunning memoir of fighting wildfires is spectacular...and alive with grit and action and poetry.
In Hotshot: A Life on Fire, author River Selby states more than once that their favorite firefighting tool is a Pulaski. The implement is similar to an axe one might use for chopping wood, but it terminates in a two-sided head, with an axe blade on one side and an adze or mattock on the other. (An adze is similar to a hoe, with the blade mounted perpendicularly to the handle, more appropriate for digging than cutting.) It's regularly used in all sorts of forest maintenance work, as the axe blade can chop through roots and downed logs while the adze blade can be employed to dislodge smaller debris and pull the hacked material out of the way.
The Pulaski has an interesting history, tracing its origins back to The Great Fire of ...
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