River of Fire: The Rattlesnake Fire and the Mission Boys

by John N. Maclean, Kari Greer (Photographs)

It was late evening when the wind over a brush-choked canyon in northern California unexpectedly shifted and roared downhill.The Rattlesnake Fire had been burning since midday on the Mendocino National Forest. The fresh, violent wind picked up embers from the fire and spun them down into the depths of the canyon, blowing into a thunderous torrent of fire.The sight mesmerized veteran firefighters. Long, fatal minutes passed before they remembered a crew of twenty-four men working in the canyon below. The firefighters had hunkered down in a ravine to eat supper – and had posted no lookouts.The alarm was raised, but it came late. Fifteen of the men below began a race with fire down the canyon, while another nine scrambled upward toward safety. Other firefighters watched in horror from canyon slopes as the torrent of fire hurtled down after the fifteen men and snuffed out their headlamps, one after another.The 1953 Rattlesnake Fire, however, has become an icon of teaching, an educational opportunity for firefighters, and a marker for wildfire safety.

Genres: Nonfiction

260 pages, Paperback

Published June 10, 2018

About the author

John Norman Maclean is a prize-winning author and journalist, has published four books on fatal wildland fires.

Maclean was born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1943, the second of two children.Maclean is the son of Norman Maclean, author of the novella A River Runs Through It.

He attended the Chicago school system through high school and graduated from Shimer College, then in Mt. Carroll, Illinois, a former satellite school of the University of Chicago. An honor student at Shimer, he received the school’s distinguished alumni award in 1975.He married Frances Ellen McGeachie in 1968; they have two adult sons, Daniel, a science teacher in Anchorage, Alaska, and John Fitzroy, a public defender for the state of Maryland.


John Maclean was a writer, editor, and reporter for the Chicago Tribune for 30 years before he resigned in 1995 to begin a second career writing books. Maclean started his journalistic career in 1964 as a police reporter and rewrite man with the legendary City News Bureau of Chicago. He went to work for the Chicago Tribune the following year.

In 1970, Maclean was assigned to the Washington Bureau of the Tribune. As diplomatic correspondent there he covered the State Department and was a regular on the "Kissinger Shuttle," covering much of the "shuttle diplomacy" of Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Maclean was a Nieman Fellow in Journalism at Harvard University for the 1974-1975 academic year. He became the Tribune’s Foreign Editor in Chicago in 1988. He resigned from the newspaper in 1995 to write Fire on the Mountain.

Maclean, a frequent speaker at wildland fire academies, workshops, and conventions, is a member of the Seeley Lake Volunteer Fire Department and the Explorer's Club. He is a qualified as a federal public information officer.

Reviews

[Katherine Addison · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an expansion and update of a piece in Maclean's earlier book, Fire and Ashes.

Maclean is a good journalist, and his books are well-written, well-researched, thoughtful. He's not as good a writer as his father (Norman Maclean, whose Young Men and Fire is one of my top three books of all time), but almost nobody is.

This book is about the Rattlesnake Fire and how and why it killed fifteen men. Maclean is thorough and careful. He's interviewed the arsonist, the survivors, anyone who was on the fire and still alive fifty years later. He's gone out and walked the "race against fire" (which he writes about with much the same organization as Norman Maclean uses in writing about the Mann Gulch Fire, which I assume is a deliberate homage). This is a careful, respectful book, predicated on the belief that if we can understand what caused the fatalities on the Rattlesnake Fire, we can keep it from happening again.

The photographs of the landscape are good photographs, but they are labeled almost illegibly (at least for me).

[Debra McElroy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Vintage Maclean

John Maclean's gift is his ability to draw together huge volumes of research material and distill it into a comprehensibleand engaging narrative that doesn't overwhelm the reader. Others have produced 500 page tomes that are technically brilliant, but lack the accessabilty and empathy that Maclean's books have. I have read four of his books on wildland fire so far, and each retains its own flavor and distinction in my memory. These books don't just tell the story of what happened where. As a group, they teach the public important lessons about the nature of sacrifice, and the fear and wonder of what is arguably the most dangerous job in America.

[Steven · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great book for anyone wanting to learn about past wildfires. I've read most of Maclean's books and they are all excellent reads. I've read both "The Thirtymile Fire" and "Fire on The Mountain", the latter of which is about the South Canyon fire and the 14 firefighters who perished while fighting it in 1994. I recommend his books to anyone who wants to learn more about wildfires or is thinking of becoming a wildland firefighter themselves.

[John E. Jones · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another great book about woodland fire by Mr.Maclean

Crisp clear and descriptive writing makes this a great easy read. This book as all the others he has written, along with those written by his father, Norman Maclean, occupy a special place in my library. They are some of my favorites.

[Lynn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent review of the Rattlesnake fire

This is Maclean's specialty and he is thorough in his treatments of fire and related fatalities. Informative and thought provoking, this account is riveting and painful, but full of hope and belief in the ability to understand these tragedies and build on lessons learned.

[Shirley Brown · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this and thought it was very well written. It wasn't the easiest book for me to read, as my brother and his son, my nephew died in a wildfire several years ago. Fortunately, my nephew's son survived the fire. It's hard to write about it even to this day. So many lives were touched by this catastrophe.

[Jacqueline Materne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent depiction of an event that could have easily been lost to history. It provides a great example for why fatality fires need to be recognized as tools for firefighters who risk encountering similar circumstances on the job. The narrative drives the lesson home.

[Stuart Marcy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not quite up to the standards of his father's Young Men And Fire or his own Fire On The Mountain, but a solid addition to the niche genre of wildfire non-fiction and an interesting review of one of the most important events in firefighting history.

[Yasmin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very thoughtful and insightful

A great book . Highly researched and well written with respect to all parties. I highly recommend this as well as his other books.

[Ben Thorne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great Book

This book does a great job relieving the history of the fire from all perspectives, and keeps the memory alive.