Alaska, Land of Fire and the Men & Women Who Fight It, 1939-2024

Look for in 2026-2027

In Alaska, Land of Fire, author Judy Ferguson does what she knows how to do better than any other Alaska author: she steps back to allow the people who made the story to tell it. Here, the “people of the flame,” men and women who disregard dirt, heat, mosquitoes, and other deprivation to do their job, recount the history of Alaska wilderness firefight­ing from the 1930s to the present. From the early era of only three fire-dedicated airplanes and two dozen fulltime employees, they strove to protect a largely road­less wilderness. The voices in this book include those of “ground-pounders,” smoke­jumpers, and dispatchers — all first-responders whose tales have never been woven together into one collection until now. Some call these folk adrenaline junkies, but without them our homes and forests would be decimated, especially with the hot­ter, drier summers of recent years. We hear accounts of fighting 1950s homestead fires as well as stories of all-out combat against complex wilderness conflagrations. These men and women share the stories of flying over blazing black spruce, para­chuting into smoldering muskeg, dealing with remote medical emergencies, and outracing the “fire dragon…” It’s a long-overdue story and one particular to The Great Land.. Look for it in 2026-27…