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Article: When fire came over the mountain.(COMMENTARY)(BOOK REVIEW)(Column)
- Article from:
- The Washington Times (Washington, DC)
- Article date:
- October 12, 2009
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2009 The Washington Times LLC. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Byline: James Srodes, SPECIAL TO THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Not since David McCullough's 1968 The Johnstown Flood grabbed readers and hurled them down the narrow Conemaugh Valley to certain doom can I remember a natural-disaster yarn that yanks one by the back of the neck face to face with horror the way Timothy Egan's The Big Burn brings the great Western fire of 1910 over the mountain to destroy the town of Wallace, Idaho.
Try Mr. Egan's prologue:
Here now came the fire down from the Bitterroot Mountains and showered embers and forest shrapnel onto the town that was supposed to be protected by all those men with faraway accents and empty stomachs. ...