Norman MacLean scrupulously examines the tragic events of August 5, 1949, when lightning struck and started a forest fire in the Rocky Mountains. Thirteen young airborne firefighters were killed trying to extinguish it, when a 200-foot high firestorm erupted into a vast wall of death. MacLean, who had been both a forester and a firefighter in his youth, left the manuscript of this monumental work unfinished at his own death in 1990, at the age of 88; he had spent 14 years writing it.