A Song for the River

From one of the last fire lookouts in America comes this sequel to the award-winning Fire Season—a story of calamity and resilience in the world's first Wilderness. A dozen years into his dream job keeping watch over the Gila Wilderness of New Mexico, Philip Connors bore witness to the wildfire he had always feared: a conflagration that forced him off his mountain by helicopter, and changed forever the forest and watershed he loved. It was merely one of many transformations that arrived in quick succession, not just fire and flood but illness, divorce, the death of a fellow lookout in a freak accident, and a tragic plane crash that rocked the community he called home. At its core an elegy for a friend he cherished like a brother, A Song for the River opens into celebration of a landscape redolent with meaning—and the river that runs through it. Connors channels the voices of the voiceless in a praise song of great urgency, and makes a plea to save a vital...