What do you think?
Rate this book
The Last Fire Season: A Personal and Pyronatural History
H Is for Hawk meets Joan Didion in the Pyrocene in this arresting combination of memoir, natural history, and literary inquiry that chronicles one woman’s experience of life in Northern California during the worst fire season on record.
Told in luminous, perceptive prose, The Last Fire Season is a deeply incisive inquiry into what it really means—now—to live in relationship to the elements of the natural world. When Manjula Martin moved from the city to the woods of Northern California, she wanted to be closer to the wilderness that she had loved as a child. She was also seeking refuge from a health crisis that left her with chronic pain, and found a sense of healing through tending her garden beneath the redwoods of Sonoma County. But the landscape that Martin treasured was an ecosystem already in crisis. Wildfires fueled by climate change were growing bigger and more each autumn, her garden filled with smoke and ash, and the local firehouse siren wailed deep into the night.
In 2020, when a dry lightning storm ignited hundreds of simultaneous wildfires across the West and kicked off the worst fire season on record, Martin, along with thousands of other Californians, evacuated her home in the midst of a pandemic. Both a love letter to the forests of the West and an interrogation of the colonialist practices that led to their current dilemma, The Last Fire Season , follows her from the oaky hills of Sonoma County to the redwood forests of coastal Santa Cruz, to the pines and peaks of the Sierra Nevada, as she seeks shelter, bears witness to the devastation, and tries to better understand fire’s role in the ecology of the West. As Martin seeks a way to navigate the daily experience of living in a damaged body on a damaged planet, she comes to question her own assumptions about nature and the complicated connections between people and the land on which we live.
Told in luminous, perceptive prose, The Last Fire Season is a deeply incisive inquiry into what it really means—now—to live in relationship to the elements of the natural world. When Manjula Martin moved from the city to the woods of Northern California, she wanted to be closer to the wilderness that she had loved as a child. She was also seeking refuge from a health crisis that left her with chronic pain, and found a sense of healing through tending her garden beneath the redwoods of Sonoma County. But the landscape that Martin treasured was an ecosystem already in crisis. Wildfires fueled by climate change were growing bigger and more each autumn, her garden filled with smoke and ash, and the local firehouse siren wailed deep into the night.
In 2020, when a dry lightning storm ignited hundreds of simultaneous wildfires across the West and kicked off the worst fire season on record, Martin, along with thousands of other Californians, evacuated her home in the midst of a pandemic. Both a love letter to the forests of the West and an interrogation of the colonialist practices that led to their current dilemma, The Last Fire Season , follows her from the oaky hills of Sonoma County to the redwood forests of coastal Santa Cruz, to the pines and peaks of the Sierra Nevada, as she seeks shelter, bears witness to the devastation, and tries to better understand fire’s role in the ecology of the West. As Martin seeks a way to navigate the daily experience of living in a damaged body on a damaged planet, she comes to question her own assumptions about nature and the complicated connections between people and the land on which we live.
352 pages, Hardcover
First published January 16, 2024
93 people are currently reading
3255 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 84 reviews
February 9, 2024
I am a completionist but I had doubts about being able to finish this one. It is quite dull and not at all what I was expecting. It is subtitled as " a personal and pyronatural history" so while I realized the book would likely be structured around Martin's memoirs, I was hoping to learn something. There were a couple interesting facts, but literally just a couple in the entire book. This book is really about Martin coming to terms with nature and herself, and was often very repetitive. She even states at one point that "To my human friends, it's boring when I tell it to them later." after recounting her dreams. Well...should have listened to those friends.
Martin herself is an almost comically stereotypical new age Californian hypocrite who doesn't approve of things that her privilege and whiteness allow her to do but rationalizes that it is ok for her while criticizing others who do it. But she feels guilty about it so that makes it ok I guess? Maybe this would have hit differently if I was white, but as it is all her talk of minorities being ignored and discriminated against felt too much like mansplaining...but for race. Is there a word for that? At one point, Martin speculates at length about what her friend, a woman of color, meant by the word "utopia" instead of just asking her and letting her speak for herself.
I also noticed that her narrative at one point was highly biased because I just read another view of this in The Great Influenza (which was also not a good book, but was better than this). In chapter 8, Martin goes off about how medical schools and licensing for doctors was started to keep out women and minorities. This is only part of the story. As related in the influenza book, this was largely done because pay-for-degree medical schools were churning out unqualified doctors who were a danger to their patients...but that doesn't support her narrative. I'm not sure how many other times Martin does stuff like this, but doing it once is more than enough.
On the plus side, Martin does have very descriptive, flowery, lyrical prose that transports you to the places she describes.
Martin herself is an almost comically stereotypical new age Californian hypocrite who doesn't approve of things that her privilege and whiteness allow her to do but rationalizes that it is ok for her while criticizing others who do it. But she feels guilty about it so that makes it ok I guess? Maybe this would have hit differently if I was white, but as it is all her talk of minorities being ignored and discriminated against felt too much like mansplaining...but for race. Is there a word for that? At one point, Martin speculates at length about what her friend, a woman of color, meant by the word "utopia" instead of just asking her and letting her speak for herself.
I also noticed that her narrative at one point was highly biased because I just read another view of this in The Great Influenza (which was also not a good book, but was better than this). In chapter 8, Martin goes off about how medical schools and licensing for doctors was started to keep out women and minorities. This is only part of the story. As related in the influenza book, this was largely done because pay-for-degree medical schools were churning out unqualified doctors who were a danger to their patients...but that doesn't support her narrative. I'm not sure how many other times Martin does stuff like this, but doing it once is more than enough.
On the plus side, Martin does have very descriptive, flowery, lyrical prose that transports you to the places she describes.
September 16, 2023
The Last Season is a captivating love story to the beauty of California. The book takes place during the second half of the year 2020 when the author is in the midst of the COVID pandemic, severe forest fires and the political unrest of the time. I learned a lot about the history of fires, how indigenous people had developed approaches to control fire and so much more. I really enjoyed reading this book and getting to know the author through her personal experiences and relationships. The book is arranged in chronological order with several interludes of recollection which were sometimes a little difficult to follow.
I recommend this book. It left me with a lot of think about regarding class, climate change and the relationship between humans and nature.
Thank you to Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor and NetGalley for an advanced reader copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
I recommend this book. It left me with a lot of think about regarding class, climate change and the relationship between humans and nature.
Thank you to Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor and NetGalley for an advanced reader copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
February 4, 2024
I enjoyed this thought-provoking read a lot. There were a few moments that felt a little repetitive or self-indulgent, but generally speaking the prose has some standout moments and this had me pondering a lot about relationship with the world—there were a few lines and ideas I wrote down to revisit.
Martin makes an effort here to point out some of her privilege and keep Indigenous people at the heart of her observations. There are a couple of moments that felt a tiny bit performative, but usually this approach was critical to the understanding—and respect—of the history of the land she’s trying to come to terms with. Martin also does a nice job of weaving in her personal narrative and journey with her body and chronic pain, making it feel like a natural fit with her discussion of wildfire and the natural world.
One question raised here is that of how we think about our connection to the world, and whether traditional conservation efforts and even simple love of nature is actually harmful to our ability to approach living on a planet in catastrophic distress. Sometimes I couldn’t quite figure out how I felt about her thoughts on this, and I think it’s a credit to the book that it left me a little uncomfortable but absolutely pondering her ideas.
If you’re interested in a personal narrative connected to fire and its connection to humans and our planet—and how they all interact—this is worth a read.
Martin makes an effort here to point out some of her privilege and keep Indigenous people at the heart of her observations. There are a couple of moments that felt a tiny bit performative, but usually this approach was critical to the understanding—and respect—of the history of the land she’s trying to come to terms with. Martin also does a nice job of weaving in her personal narrative and journey with her body and chronic pain, making it feel like a natural fit with her discussion of wildfire and the natural world.
One question raised here is that of how we think about our connection to the world, and whether traditional conservation efforts and even simple love of nature is actually harmful to our ability to approach living on a planet in catastrophic distress. Sometimes I couldn’t quite figure out how I felt about her thoughts on this, and I think it’s a credit to the book that it left me a little uncomfortable but absolutely pondering her ideas.
If you’re interested in a personal narrative connected to fire and its connection to humans and our planet—and how they all interact—this is worth a read.
May 10, 2024
This was a tough one to read and review simply because I believe it's a good book, BUT, just not for me. I was tempted to give it two stars as that more accurately reflects my experience but I don't want to screw up the algorithm for others who would appreciate it.
In describing this book words like challenging, dark, emotional, informative, sad and reflective are all appropriate, though I thought that all too often I would describe it as... self-indulgent. Sorry but I just started to grow weary reading what felt like an endless stream of consciousness journal about living in the fire zone on a planet that is becoming unlivable. I'm theory this sounds like it would make for compelling reading, and I've read and actually enjoyed many of those sorts of books. This one did not work for me.
In addition to growing irritated and tired of the authors bemoaning her disrupted and uncertain future (humanities really), I grew annoyed by her continual, self-admitted doomscrolling and all too often getting depressed and feeling powerless... correlation much?!
I'm not sure who this book is for? Definitely not me.
In describing this book words like challenging, dark, emotional, informative, sad and reflective are all appropriate, though I thought that all too often I would describe it as... self-indulgent. Sorry but I just started to grow weary reading what felt like an endless stream of consciousness journal about living in the fire zone on a planet that is becoming unlivable. I'm theory this sounds like it would make for compelling reading, and I've read and actually enjoyed many of those sorts of books. This one did not work for me.
In addition to growing irritated and tired of the authors bemoaning her disrupted and uncertain future (humanities really), I grew annoyed by her continual, self-admitted doomscrolling and all too often getting depressed and feeling powerless... correlation much?!
I'm not sure who this book is for? Definitely not me.
May 6, 2024
I’m never going to think about nature the same way again. I want to say this book is beautiful, in the way I’d say nature is beautiful, but that would be too simple and too social. It was honest, and it was both observant and present. Which is rare these days.
April 19, 2024
This book should be right up my alley—I seek out writing about natural history and ecology, I love memoir, I suspect I share most of Martin’s political views, I’m a lifelong Californian and lived through the fire seasons Martin describes. But sadly, I had trouble getting through The Last Fire Season, much as I was looking forward to it and really wanted to love it. Perhaps the book would have worked better as a collection of essays, rather than as a kind of stream-of-consciousness chronological memoir that didn’t have much chronology. I found that Martin touched on many topics while seldom delving deeper; it began to feel that she brought up topics (for example, her conflict around doing u-pick flowers while recognizing that it’s a middle-class way of paying to do something that poor and/or migrant workers must do as labor) to virtue-signal/assuage her own guilt rather than to actually offer any incisive critical analysis.
March 5, 2024
I switched to audio book about 50 pages in. This book wasn't for me. I don't really even like the author much after reading this. I was expecting more focus on the California wild fires, but, it was more focused on the author, her battle with chronic illness and seemed almost....whiny? I also don't think I was the target audience for this sooo if it looks good to you, still give it a chance.
Thank you Penguin Random House for gifting me this book.
Thank you Penguin Random House for gifting me this book.
September 13, 2025
Beautiful, terrible nonfiction narrative about when our world and ourselves are on fire.
April 29, 2024
I wavered between 3 and 4 stars on this; I didn’t like it as much as most books that I give 4 stars too but felt it was better than most that I give 3 to. I decided to round up.
I thought it tackled fire in a nuanced and complex way, which felt refreshing. I appreciated that the author delved deep into Indigenous peoples’ use of fire and the ample evidence that we need to return fire to the land — while also making space for grief, anxiety, and other difficult emotions that come with thinking about losing one’s home to fire and living with that constant threat.
I felt my interest wane in the last third of the book though. I think that most likely was due to the fact that the book felt 15% too long to me. I wonder if the structure of different sections for each month of fire season led to some narrative inflation?
Interweaving the author’s experiences with medical trauma and chronic pain made for an interesting approach, although I was left feeling overall like it didn’t always make for a coherent narrative. I wonder if that was the point though… pain and fire, two things complex enough to resist a coherent narrative?
The prose was strong and elegant throughout and there were lots of interesting and moving bits to save and highlight.
I thought it tackled fire in a nuanced and complex way, which felt refreshing. I appreciated that the author delved deep into Indigenous peoples’ use of fire and the ample evidence that we need to return fire to the land — while also making space for grief, anxiety, and other difficult emotions that come with thinking about losing one’s home to fire and living with that constant threat.
I felt my interest wane in the last third of the book though. I think that most likely was due to the fact that the book felt 15% too long to me. I wonder if the structure of different sections for each month of fire season led to some narrative inflation?
Interweaving the author’s experiences with medical trauma and chronic pain made for an interesting approach, although I was left feeling overall like it didn’t always make for a coherent narrative. I wonder if that was the point though… pain and fire, two things complex enough to resist a coherent narrative?
The prose was strong and elegant throughout and there were lots of interesting and moving bits to save and highlight.
April 25, 2024
I could not get into this book. I also couldn’t get past the author’s navel gazing. Definitely not a John McPhee type book where history, science and biology come together to make an interesting and compelling story…..this was all about her and pretty boring.
March 8, 2024
This book could have been so much better. It started strong and contained some interesting history and facts about wild fires. There were stretches of beautiful prose that lovingly described the fabulous California redwood forests. However, I simply had trouble with page after page after page describing the authors struggle with pain following abdominal surgery. While I sympathize with her struggle, it really overtook the book and I struggled to finish as a result.
February 20, 2024
This was a tortuous read, it started out 5 stars, I lost my house in one of the mega fires she started with, but it morphed into her life, it felt like I was living in the 60s with her hippie dippy drugs lifestyle, huge turn off mixed with occasional interesting facts. Only finished to see if she lost her house in a fire, the answer is no...
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 14, 2024
The Last Fire Season: A Personal and Pyronatural History
Manjula Martin. Audiobook read by the author (An excellent reader).
Martin’s writing can dazzle at times, but her true brilliance shines through when she engages with the reader through an investigative new journalistic style, providing an informative historical context mixed with personal observations. As I listened, I imagined her medical experience becoming an impactful piece of investigative journalism. However, the structure of this memoir meandered, and halfway through, my interest waned. I forced myself to listen until the end.
The most off-putting parts of this memoir were when the author indulged in sanctimonious political posturing to the point of insult by pointing out the noble indigenous people pitted against the privileged white interlopers. This kind of political correctness is divisive. On the fire lines, we all need to work together. In the face of climate change, we all need to work together to find answers to problems that technology might not solve, and juvenile name-calling accomplishes nothing.
Rural living, whether in the Santa Cruz mountains, Sierra Nevada foothills, or west Sonoma County, is a stark reminder of the need for personal responsibility. It's a world where you fill potholes yourself, where the sheriff and medical services don’t arrive in a few minutes, and where the CPUC may eliminate reliable landline phones in areas without cell service. The next fire in California is not an if but a when. The same goes for the next drought and earthquake. This reality underscores the urgency of being prepared and self-reliant.
I encourage Martin to write investigative pieces about environmentally sustainable living and traveling.
Manjula Martin. Audiobook read by the author (An excellent reader).
Martin’s writing can dazzle at times, but her true brilliance shines through when she engages with the reader through an investigative new journalistic style, providing an informative historical context mixed with personal observations. As I listened, I imagined her medical experience becoming an impactful piece of investigative journalism. However, the structure of this memoir meandered, and halfway through, my interest waned. I forced myself to listen until the end.
The most off-putting parts of this memoir were when the author indulged in sanctimonious political posturing to the point of insult by pointing out the noble indigenous people pitted against the privileged white interlopers. This kind of political correctness is divisive. On the fire lines, we all need to work together. In the face of climate change, we all need to work together to find answers to problems that technology might not solve, and juvenile name-calling accomplishes nothing.
Rural living, whether in the Santa Cruz mountains, Sierra Nevada foothills, or west Sonoma County, is a stark reminder of the need for personal responsibility. It's a world where you fill potholes yourself, where the sheriff and medical services don’t arrive in a few minutes, and where the CPUC may eliminate reliable landline phones in areas without cell service. The next fire in California is not an if but a when. The same goes for the next drought and earthquake. This reality underscores the urgency of being prepared and self-reliant.
I encourage Martin to write investigative pieces about environmentally sustainable living and traveling.
February 29, 2024
I think I would have enjoyed this book more if the author wasn’t so angry about so many things. I really enjoyed all I learned about “good fire” vs bad fire and so much I was unaware of about the indigenous ways of managing forests. The author’s memories of growing up and her deep love of plants and nature were warm and so genuine. But these were clouded by her focus on her pain and living with it and also her very broad brush comments about men in general. At least to me….
March 1, 2024
Definitely not my type of book. This person sounds crazy! And who talks about fire and plants for 13 hours! The things wrong in this world come from people like this!
April 10, 2024
First person POV of being a resident in the redwoods of Northern California where the wildfire play, and the population feels entitled to safe seclusion. Guess again.
July 28, 2024
.5 star for writing: Some beautiful sentences with one extremely fatal flaw-the author's hypocrisy is difficult to ignore. She will lead with "this thing is bad because of all the isms..." and then proceed to do it. And what makes this harder to swallow is her inability to hold space for people who are doing the best that they can.
0 star for research quality: Research appeared to be largely one-sided.
1 star for premise: There's a lot of promise in this-a lot of good conversation to be had about the use of fire in land management, it just got lost in the barbs and memoir pieces.
0 star for impact
0 star for personal taste
I'm a PNW native and I was super excited about this one, but there is a tone here that is frustrating. I'm a fairly strong leftist, but there are a class of us that can not abide anyone who isn't 100 percent aligned with their form of leftism and therefore are closed off to open discourse. These folks are convinced that their version of the truth is the only possible version of the truth and that everyone else is wrong and worse-maybe a bad human. That tone is one that I'm sensitive to and I saw it here. These issues are all so complicated, and things are not black and white. We are all in danger if we plant our little flags and start acting like we KNOW and everyone else is bad for not KNOWING the way we KNOW.
0 star for research quality: Research appeared to be largely one-sided.
1 star for premise: There's a lot of promise in this-a lot of good conversation to be had about the use of fire in land management, it just got lost in the barbs and memoir pieces.
0 star for impact
0 star for personal taste
I'm a PNW native and I was super excited about this one, but there is a tone here that is frustrating. I'm a fairly strong leftist, but there are a class of us that can not abide anyone who isn't 100 percent aligned with their form of leftism and therefore are closed off to open discourse. These folks are convinced that their version of the truth is the only possible version of the truth and that everyone else is wrong and worse-maybe a bad human. That tone is one that I'm sensitive to and I saw it here. These issues are all so complicated, and things are not black and white. We are all in danger if we plant our little flags and start acting like we KNOW and everyone else is bad for not KNOWING the way we KNOW.
June 24, 2024
I'm still processing this one. I'm not sure where to rate it.
While I enjoy parts of the book, I feel the author tends to get annoying, especially about Covid. She has a job that allows her the luxury of working from home. I know many people who lost their jobs, or were essential workers who had little or no options to shelter at home. Every time she complained about being stuck at home, I just really wanted to smack her, since I had to go out to work every day dealing with the insanity of Covid.
This book reinforces echo bubbles. If you already agree with the author, then you'll probably love the book. But she does a poor job of persuading people because of the language she uses. A lot of good info gets lost in the noise. She interrupts her thoughts a lot with tangents and it gets confusing trying to understand what she is trying to say. Some of her language is very loaded and will turn off readers.
That all being said, there are some beautiful passages in the book. I love how she described tending her garden. I also understood what she meant when she spoke about her chronic pain as I also deal with debilitating chronic pain. It's just the book could really use a better editor.
While I enjoy parts of the book, I feel the author tends to get annoying, especially about Covid. She has a job that allows her the luxury of working from home. I know many people who lost their jobs, or were essential workers who had little or no options to shelter at home. Every time she complained about being stuck at home, I just really wanted to smack her, since I had to go out to work every day dealing with the insanity of Covid.
This book reinforces echo bubbles. If you already agree with the author, then you'll probably love the book. But she does a poor job of persuading people because of the language she uses. A lot of good info gets lost in the noise. She interrupts her thoughts a lot with tangents and it gets confusing trying to understand what she is trying to say. Some of her language is very loaded and will turn off readers.
That all being said, there are some beautiful passages in the book. I love how she described tending her garden. I also understood what she meant when she spoke about her chronic pain as I also deal with debilitating chronic pain. It's just the book could really use a better editor.
January 13, 2024
An original addition to my fire library. Most of the growing pile of books on the subject are either non-fiction accounts of a particular disaster or popular science works explaining how we got to the age of mega-fire. This intimate, poetic essay shows us from a first-person perspective what it means to live through the Pyrocene. Wildfire is always in the background - but life is more complicated and the author shares many other, often difficult experiences, memories and dreams.
Well written and thought provoking.
Thanks to the publisher, Pantheons Books, and NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book.
Well written and thought provoking.
Thanks to the publisher, Pantheons Books, and NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book.
March 7, 2024
I really wanted to like this one...and it is really well written. I totally skimmed it which I feel bad about, but I'm chalking it up to it being the wrong time for me to enjoy it.
August 4, 2025
Holt-Delhi library Nonfiction Book Discussion group title August 2025.
February 2, 2024
Staying with the trouble
This is a must read for everyone living now. The book is grounded in research and breadth of reading. The prose is beautiful. I love the way she blends her personal story with place and love of place. Deeply affecting.
This is a must read for everyone living now. The book is grounded in research and breadth of reading. The prose is beautiful. I love the way she blends her personal story with place and love of place. Deeply affecting.
May 19, 2024
Repetition of BS propaganda, the same barrage of false information flooding the media. Wish the author stayed in the city and didn’t write about things like forests that she knows nothing about. (Follow the money if you want to discover the actual truth).
May 6, 2024
Follow the author as she chronicles living among the trees in California despite the high rate of fires. Then compares the ebb and flow of a fire season with her own pain-filled health issues.
Read
April 30, 2024DNF. Could not get into it
July 19, 2024
This book gets five stars from me because it is so good at melding the the author's personal story with the larger societal story of learning to live with fire and drought. Her sanctuary where she moved to recover and learn to live with pain caused by a medical system that failed her could be said to be under attack from fire caused by a greater safety system that has failed the whole region.
Except she isn't satisfied with seeing the world around her in such binary ways. It could be easy to quote parts of this book and mock them. It is the self aware vulnerability that makes any cringe moments worth taking in the context of her whole book. Sometimes I wondered if in 20 years we will look at her very current language in the same way she thought about her parents generation's view of "utopia" and communes. What stopped me though is that it doesn't matter. We don't live in that future. We live now.
This book is very much about our system as it is and what steps we can take now. How the author chooses to spend the life she has now. She does not waste time wishing that mistakes were not made but acknowledges they happened. She finds a good balance between showing how individual choices matter for good and ill but that we are also caught up in a larger system that we only have so much power to control.
It can be awkward and a little zeitgeisty. But then these are the times we live in and can only confront it with the spirit we allow.
Except she isn't satisfied with seeing the world around her in such binary ways. It could be easy to quote parts of this book and mock them. It is the self aware vulnerability that makes any cringe moments worth taking in the context of her whole book. Sometimes I wondered if in 20 years we will look at her very current language in the same way she thought about her parents generation's view of "utopia" and communes. What stopped me though is that it doesn't matter. We don't live in that future. We live now.
This book is very much about our system as it is and what steps we can take now. How the author chooses to spend the life she has now. She does not waste time wishing that mistakes were not made but acknowledges they happened. She finds a good balance between showing how individual choices matter for good and ill but that we are also caught up in a larger system that we only have so much power to control.
It can be awkward and a little zeitgeisty. But then these are the times we live in and can only confront it with the spirit we allow.
May 31, 2024
I struggled to finish this. I picked up because the “natural history” part resonated with what I was looking for and I was hoping to find something that could explain fire management and Californian fire history. I was expecting some personal exposition, but this was not my cup of tea. It’s about Martin coming to terms with medical trauma cast against the fires. There’s no interesting insight or new data about fire management to be found in this.
I gave it 2 stars instead of one because this book has some really beautiful prose. I feel like I could have appreciated it more if I knew what I was getting into, but it was sold to me wrong and my expectations for the book were not met. I feel very disappointed. Do not read this if you’re expecting a John McPhee type book like I was.
I gave it 2 stars instead of one because this book has some really beautiful prose. I feel like I could have appreciated it more if I knew what I was getting into, but it was sold to me wrong and my expectations for the book were not met. I feel very disappointed. Do not read this if you’re expecting a John McPhee type book like I was.
November 11, 2025
This is easily among the best fire memoirs that I've read, though potential readers should beware that it is not a traditional fire memoir in the slightest. Instead, it's a book about climate and twenty-first century grief; a book of navigating personal healing; a book of struggling with what 2020 meant. It's emphatically not a creative non-fiction pop-science book, but that makes it all the richer. It's an intimate capsule of a moment in time of what it means to bear and witness suffering at every scale from your own body to the planet.
We encounter this theme of grief early in the book. Once Martin evacuates and is staying with her father, she recounts looking at him:
For Martin, this pain is intimate. Woven through much of the book is her own suffering and health challenges, which become both a compounding and aggravating factor amidst her experience of climate chaos, but also an analogy for what she experiences in the planet.
One of the defining features of the book is the simultaneous struggle with COVID and wildfire alike. As Martin explains, "After the necessary social restrictions of the pandemic had made gathering indoors a health hazard, the outdoors had become a respite, a chance to breathe freely and socialize safely - until the lightning fires enclosed us all in smoke again. Now everywhere was dangerous, inside and out" (p. 129). At the risk of pontificating here, I think the interplay of fire and virus is so rich, and I grieve for the way we've tried to simply deny and put the latter out of our mind, instead of staying with that trouble that exists to this day.
Despite being such a personal portrayal, there's also some interesting theory work. Her conversations with Andrea Bustos, for example, and the introduction of the term "neopyrocolonialism" (p. 79) are wonderfully generative. "In Andean worldviews, Bustos told me, fire is an integrated part of everything, an element of life... Good fire is forever. Good fire requires changing who you think you are and what you believe." (p. 80). So too is her reference to Anna Tsing's "collaborative survival" (p. 196); Amitav Ghosh's importance of cultural production for meeting disasters (p. 69); and Clark and Yusoff's pyrosexual and queer ecological theory of fire (p. 220). And the same is true of José Luis' comment that he "feels fire's personhood when fire responds to his touch. When you're using a drip torch there's a way, he explains, that you can grab fire. You can tell fire: Okay, I'm here. I'm bringing you over here, come with me. Like a shepherd. And it chooses to come." (p. 296).
Martin's book does, in some ways, take the common turn towards 'hope,' though she is very explicit in rejecting simplistic views of hope as panacea. Instead, "alongside my grief, I feel something else. My prior assumptions - that a burned place is either a moonscape ruin or a rebounding font of organic life, but nothing in between - are quickly becoming confused" (p. 246).
I love her ending, that
In the end, that's what this book is. It's got some rich theoretical nuggets, but it is ultimately as much about navigating one's own health as it is about the flames. But, Martin draws such rich connections between the two, and reveals in such real and raw terms, what it means to live in this messy, throbbing grief. That creates an absolutely beautiful book that will be centred on my shelf and recommendations, and sits really nicely alongside the excess of pop science books that it complements.
We encounter this theme of grief early in the book. Once Martin evacuates and is staying with her father, she recounts looking at him:
As I watched him write, a staggering sadness overcame me... This was a person of routine, a person who hadn't left California in more than forty years because he didn't think anywhere else could possibly be as good. What must it have been like for him, to witness his environment so painfully altered? Displaced from his house and garden, even temporarily... The pain rose and pooled behind my lungs." (p. 65)
For Martin, this pain is intimate. Woven through much of the book is her own suffering and health challenges, which become both a compounding and aggravating factor amidst her experience of climate chaos, but also an analogy for what she experiences in the planet.
One of the defining features of the book is the simultaneous struggle with COVID and wildfire alike. As Martin explains, "After the necessary social restrictions of the pandemic had made gathering indoors a health hazard, the outdoors had become a respite, a chance to breathe freely and socialize safely - until the lightning fires enclosed us all in smoke again. Now everywhere was dangerous, inside and out" (p. 129). At the risk of pontificating here, I think the interplay of fire and virus is so rich, and I grieve for the way we've tried to simply deny and put the latter out of our mind, instead of staying with that trouble that exists to this day.
Despite being such a personal portrayal, there's also some interesting theory work. Her conversations with Andrea Bustos, for example, and the introduction of the term "neopyrocolonialism" (p. 79) are wonderfully generative. "In Andean worldviews, Bustos told me, fire is an integrated part of everything, an element of life... Good fire is forever. Good fire requires changing who you think you are and what you believe." (p. 80). So too is her reference to Anna Tsing's "collaborative survival" (p. 196); Amitav Ghosh's importance of cultural production for meeting disasters (p. 69); and Clark and Yusoff's pyrosexual and queer ecological theory of fire (p. 220). And the same is true of José Luis' comment that he "feels fire's personhood when fire responds to his touch. When you're using a drip torch there's a way, he explains, that you can grab fire. You can tell fire: Okay, I'm here. I'm bringing you over here, come with me. Like a shepherd. And it chooses to come." (p. 296).
Martin's book does, in some ways, take the common turn towards 'hope,' though she is very explicit in rejecting simplistic views of hope as panacea. Instead, "alongside my grief, I feel something else. My prior assumptions - that a burned place is either a moonscape ruin or a rebounding font of organic life, but nothing in between - are quickly becoming confused" (p. 246).
I love her ending, that
"my perception had been that fire was a relatively new presence in my life. The truth was that my prior life without fire had been exceptional. I happened to be born and live at a moment in which fire, while never truly gone, had been by force, law, and denial pushed - suppressed - to the margins of human experience. But it belonged here, it had always been here, underground somewhere, and it would be back soon." (p. 266-267).
In the end, that's what this book is. It's got some rich theoretical nuggets, but it is ultimately as much about navigating one's own health as it is about the flames. But, Martin draws such rich connections between the two, and reveals in such real and raw terms, what it means to live in this messy, throbbing grief. That creates an absolutely beautiful book that will be centred on my shelf and recommendations, and sits really nicely alongside the excess of pop science books that it complements.
March 10, 2024
How can a book about climate change, Covid-19, and chronic pain be this beautiful? In The Last Fire Season, Manjula Martin brings readers along on a four-month roller-coaster of loss and uncertainty in her small Northern California “rur-urban” community. Already feeling discombobulated by the coronavirus pandemic and an unrelated medical ordeal that has left her with ever-present pain, Martin and her partner, Max, then face an even more intimidating and uncontrollable force: fire.
During the second half of 2020, they must fully confront the reality of living alongside the wildfires that have become pervasive across their region of the country. In stark prose, Martin explains the environmental dynamics at play, how fires have increased in size and force and duration over the decades. What was once a clearly delineated “fire season” has now expanded to be a year-round presence in their lives. Yet Martin and Max are not interested in pulling up stakes and moving elsewhere. They are community organizers and cultivators, both dedicated to enacting change rather than abandoning their home. In The Last Fire Season, they recognize that they cannot avoid a reckoning with climate change; no one, regardless of education or privilege or wealth, can escape this force. As Martin has done with her chronic pain, they must learn to accommodate it, in whatever ways they can.
While that might sound like a depressing perspective, Martin’s book is somehow still lovely and hopeful. Her skill as a writer is one key to achieving this feat: the word “lyrical” is undoubtedly the best description of her style, and passages about the natural world are imbued with a peaceful energy. Martin writes with nuance, urgency, and a recognition of the culpability we all share in wanting climate change to happen somewhere else. The Last Fire Season is a powerful and necessary book that should be widely read.
During the second half of 2020, they must fully confront the reality of living alongside the wildfires that have become pervasive across their region of the country. In stark prose, Martin explains the environmental dynamics at play, how fires have increased in size and force and duration over the decades. What was once a clearly delineated “fire season” has now expanded to be a year-round presence in their lives. Yet Martin and Max are not interested in pulling up stakes and moving elsewhere. They are community organizers and cultivators, both dedicated to enacting change rather than abandoning their home. In The Last Fire Season, they recognize that they cannot avoid a reckoning with climate change; no one, regardless of education or privilege or wealth, can escape this force. As Martin has done with her chronic pain, they must learn to accommodate it, in whatever ways they can.
While that might sound like a depressing perspective, Martin’s book is somehow still lovely and hopeful. Her skill as a writer is one key to achieving this feat: the word “lyrical” is undoubtedly the best description of her style, and passages about the natural world are imbued with a peaceful energy. Martin writes with nuance, urgency, and a recognition of the culpability we all share in wanting climate change to happen somewhere else. The Last Fire Season is a powerful and necessary book that should be widely read.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 84 reviews