The Burning Season

At the start of fire season, Opal Gloria Halloway, newly 12 and raised by her mother and grandmother in a fire tower in New Mexico’s Gila Wilderness, begins her training as a fourth-generation female lookout. Via first-person verse that employs language both lyrically evocative (“The sun rests on the mesa/ washing our ridge in pinks and golds”) and mundane (“Gran’s done so much for me”), Opal shares her pride and eagerness to carry on her family’s work while harboring a secret: a harrowing experience with the devastating Black Fire two years earlier has left her pyrophobic. Exposition surrounding the family’s background and fire management information initially slows the action, but as Rose (Miraculous) layers ongoing drama, the tension ramps up. In a gripping climax, Opal, alone, hunts for and then fights to contain a blaze indicated by a “finger of white” she spots while searching for her recently disappeared grandmother. An author’s note provides a history of fire management—and mismanagement—and details methods of fire control developed centuries ago by Indigenous peoples and those used today. The Halloways are white. Ages 10–up. (May)