The Last Fire Season: A Personal and Pyronatural History
by Manjula Martin
Buy on AmazonH Is for Hawk meets Joan Didion in the Pyrocene in this arresting combination of memoir, natural history, and literary inquiry that chronicles one woman’s experience of life in Northern California during the worst fire season on record. FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • AN NPR BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR Told in luminous, perceptive prose, The Last Fire Season is a deeply incisive inquiry into what it really means—now—to live in relationship to the elements of the natural world. When Manjula Martin moved from the city to the woods of Northern California, she wanted to be closer to the wilderness that she had loved as a child.…
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"The Last Fire Season tells a critically important story about climate change, land cultivation, and the fires that broke out in northern California in 2020. Manjula Martin writes about science and history in an accessible and engaging manner, and because she lived through these fires, she makes the story of their impact extremely vivid. Yes, she also weaves in her personal story of disability, showing the interconnectedness of our bodies and ecosystems."
The Best Memoirs: The 2025 NBCC Autobiography Shortlist · fivebooks.com
"In 2020, wildfires in California broke records, burning more than 4 million acres. Manjula Martin records what it was like to live through these conflagrations, with lyrical attention to detail, placing her experience in the context of deep ecological history. As she recounts months when the siren on her local firehouse in western Sonoma County blared almost daily, Martin reflects on what it means to make one’s home in a place that is destined to burn and to live “inside a damaged body on a damaged planet.” This meditation on the climate crisis demands attention."
NPR Books We Love — 2024 · apps.npr.org