Flaming Forest

Flaming Forest is the first in the series of books featuring Hank Winton, which showcase the fire-fighting role of the United States Forest Service. It was written in the terminal years of the Great Depression, shortly before the entry of the United States into World War II.....Set in the time period during which it was written, the Forest Service had just begun experimenting with parachutes as a means of rapid delivery of fire-fighters to remote locations. The term smokejumper had yet to be coined. These were days when supplies to remote facilities deep within the wilderness were packed in by mule-train. Dude was a mildly derogatory term applied to easterners and city folk, meaning greenhorn or tenderfoot. And the average monthly salary for a Dude Wrangler was forty-dollars. ....Yet over the past eighty years, little has changed in the equipment or the methods employed by the ground troops battling on the fire-lines, where the most important tools remain the skill and courage of the men and women who put their bodies on the line for the benefit of us all.