In a week where fires blazed out of control across Hawaii, killing dozens and forcing the evacuation of thousands, no book feels timelier than John Vaillant’s Fire Weather, a deeply reported narrative of one of Canada’s most destructive recent wildfires. It is also a strongly argued polemic on the culpability of the petrochemical industry in a hotter, increasingly flammable world.
In a cleverly constructed narrative that reads in parts like a Jane Harper thriller, we meet a cast of real-life characters chasing their fortunes in Fort McMurray, a modern boom town built to exploit Alberta’s vast reserves of tar sands. Their lives were upended, sometimes forever, when a wildfire known as MWF-009 ripped through the city streets, destroying more than 3,000 homes and buildings and forcing 90,000 residents to flee for their lives.
