Redding-based Kelly Ramsey has written an intense “you are there” memoir of 2020 and 2021 when she fought fires on the Rowdy River Hotshots. These were “Wildfire Days: A Woman, A Hotshot Crew, And The Burning American West” ($29.99 in hardcover from Scribner; also for Amazon Kindle and in audiobook format read by the author).

Back then “I lived in a town called Happy Camp. Yes, that’s a place. This was the real Northern California, not the Bay Area, thank you very much. If the Golden State is a bent appendage, its swollen forearm bearing LA like a red boil, my California lay above the elbow.”

Divided into the two seasons, the first focuses on Ramsey as a rookie hotshot. “Hotshot crews,” she writes, “are physically and operationally intense. … These crews tackle the most difficult and remote parts of wildfires, doing the hardest manual labor and hiking deep into the wilderness to places other crews can’t or won’t go.”

And “scariest of all, while I had hoped the crew would pick up another lady or two, I learned that I’d be the sole woman and the first in nearly a decade. To many of the guys, I’d be the only girl they’d ever worked with. Just me and nineteen men who were probably faster, stronger, and more knowledgeable than I was. No big deal.”

That season they worked the Slater Fire, North Complex and August Complex, among others. The second season would take them to the Monument and Dixie fires, and more. In this season personal entanglements rise to the fore. Engaged to a non-Hotshot firefighter, Ramsey finds a deep-seated acceptance among the Rowdy River crew — just one of the dudes — and a soul-deep freedom she doesn’t have with her boyfriend.

The child of a dysfunctional and broken family, the influence of her alcoholic father looms large in Ramsey’s yearning to find herself and be herself. Beautifully written, often raw, it’s an unforgettable journey, callouses and all.

Kelly Ramsey is Nancy Wiegman’s guest on Nancy’s Bookshelf on Northstate Public Radio, mynspr.org, Wednesday, July 9 at 10 a.m., repeated Sunday, July 13 at 8 p.m.

Dan Barnett teaches philosophy at Butte College. Send review requests to dbarnett99@me.com. Columns archived at https://barnetto.substack.com