Young Men and Fire by Norman Maclean
A memoir, an investigation, and a meditation on storytelling, art, chance, and death--this is a book that defies categorization. On a hot afternoon in 1949 15 elite U.S. Forest Service Smokejumpers parachuted into Mann Gulch in Montana's Helena National Forest to fight what they believed to be a manageable fire. Within two hours, 12 of them (along with another firefighter) were dead or fatally burnt. Maclean saw the immediate aftermath and was so haunted by the experience that he returned 28 years later to write about it, telling the story if only to explain to himself how it happened. Young Men and Fire is an elegy for those firefighters and others who die young and unexpectedly, a simple, limpid, and beautifully written tragedy, a quiet classic of American letters.