The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire That Saved America
The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America is 324 pages written by Timothy Egan. The book is painstakingly pieced together from historical archives and other recorded accounts of the true story, and retold in something of a fictional but true-to-life storytelling style. It is written in a past tense, informational and yet personal tone - telling a story - as if it’s relaying the real-life experiences of the characters. A few pages of photographs from the times give its characters life.
Set in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, the book initially speaks intimately of Teddy Roosevelt - as a man, and not just as a president. Turning points and tragedies in his life, such as when his mother and beloved wife both died on the same day (Valentine‘s Day), in the same house, of different ailments, are brought out as making him the man he would become as President. His toughness, such as being a man who loved to box a good match with his friends and visitors, is balanced with his deep love of nature
Gifford Pinchot, the original forester of the U.S., is another main figure, and a good friend of Roosevelt. Also a mystic, Pinchot was enthralled with the spirit of his lost love, a woman who had died of tuberculosis before they could marry.
These and others in the story are the men involved at early stages of such iconic American entities as Boone and Crockett, and of course, also men like Muir, the founder of the Sierra Club.
The political and the power battle, with all of it’s ugly ramifications, to keep the wealthy from stripping the land and to preserve the forests of the United States, is an integral part of the book.
As political tensions over the riches of the nation’s forests rise, forest fires have begun to take off. Rangers were in too short supply to cover the manpower needed to fight them. As the fires spread, soldiers, miners, immigrants, and nearly any able-bodied man who was up to the task was hired to fight them, in the assumption that man had control over nature.
The debauchery of the unsettled lands is also approached, in reference to what the rangers of the times had to face. They were often not accepted by the unruly people.
The book makes the heart wrenching devastation of such events a reality. Nearly 3.2 million acres burned in these fires, taking forests, homes, entire towns, and lives. This is not just a story about the events that took place in the history-making fires of 1910, this is a story of heroes and of broken men.