YOUNG MEN & FIRE

This book's energy consists of "the universe's four elements at work: sky, earth, fire, and young men." The Mann Gulch forest fire, which killed 13 smokejumpers in 1949, incites the author's fourteen-year investigation of the tragedy years later. The narrator's throaty voice (he's the author's son and a pastor's grandson) seems stiff. As the story unfolds in its roundabout way, his performance sometimes sounds like a taciturn minister's pulpit delivery.Yet, he reads his father's unconventional denouement, a sermon of curious metaphors on the ultimate meaning of the deaths, without even a hint of clerical passion. The sound of crackling fire in dry pine logs provides innovative chapter breaks. J.A.H. © AudioFile 2001, Portland, Maine [Published: APR/MAY 01]