![]() ![]() Yet Smokejumper is more of a manual than a memoir. Notably, Maclean’s son, John, who wrote another smokejumper classic, 1999’s Fire on the Mountain, about the South Canyon Fire, provides the introduction to Ramos’s book, praising it as a rare inside story. Smokejumper is a workmanlike complement to Norman Maclean’s eloquent 1992 classic, Young Men and Fire, which explored the complex physics and human toll of Montana’s 1949 Mann Gulch Fire and the 13 men who died there. ![]() He was a volunteer fireman at the age of 17, and with the truest of grit he worked his way to the elite corps of smokejumpers, where he’s now in his 16th fire season, based in Winthrop, Washington state’s North Cascades Smokejumper Base. ![]() A restless, self-described “Puerto Rican kid from the SoCal suburbs,” Ramos had no collegiate prospects after high school. He wasn’t tall or physically powerful, but he had a stoic ability to develop his strength. In the book’s opening chapters, Ramos gives a terse account of his early days. ![]()
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May 2023
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