Breathing Fire

Female Inmate Firefighters on the Front Lines of California's Wildfires

By: Jaime Lowe

Narrated by: Frankie Corzo, Jaime Lowe

This program features a bonus clip with archival recordings from several of the inmate firefighters and the author.

A dramatic, revelatory account of the female inmate firefighters who battle California wildfires.

Shawna was overcome by the claustrophobia, the heat, the smoke, the fire, all just down the canyon and up the ravine. She was feeling the adrenaline, but also the terror of doing something for the first time. She knew how to run with a backpack; they had trained her physically. But that’s not training for flames. That’s not live fire.

California’s fire season gets hotter, longer, and more extreme every year - fire season is now year-round. Of the thousands of firefighters who battle California’s blazes every year, roughly 30 percent of the on-the-ground wildland crews are inmates earning a dollar an hour. Approximately 200 of those firefighters are women serving on all-female crews.

In Breathing Fire, Jaime Lowe expands on her revelatory work for The New York Times Magazine. She has spent years getting to know dozens of women who have participated in the fire camp program and spoken to captains, family and friends, correctional officers, and camp commanders. The result is a rare, illuminating look at how the fire camps actually operate - a story that encompasses California’s underlying catastrophes of climate change, economic disparity, and historical injustice, but also draws on deeply personal histories, relationships, desires, frustrations, and the emotional and physical intensity of firefighting.

Lowe’s reporting is a groundbreaking investigation of the prison system, and an intimate portrayal of the women of California’s Correctional Camps who put their lives on the line, while imprisoned, to save a state in peril.

A Macmillan Audio production from MCD

©2021 Jaime Lowe (P)2021 Macmillan Audio

A Hard Listen

The narration was not great and detracted from the story and information. Very monotone. However, this book contains some eye opening information about the history of California and the prison system. Maybe try the book instead.

Informative, captivating and pertinent.

Fire is now a way of life in California. Everything can change in an instant and the loss of lives and way of life forever devastating. So grateful for all firefighters, but especially the prisoners who give there all and go unrewarded.
Only one star for performance because the quality of the recording was so poor. This was no fault of the reader who did an outstanding job. Audible you need to fix this!

A deeply human and widely historic story

Jaime Lowe probes deeply into the stories of the women inmate firefighters— what their lives were like, how they ended up in jail, what they learned fighting fires and what had happened to them since the death of one of their colleagues. You will come to respect and care for these women, as the author clearly does. But the book also cast a wide net to give the stories context: California's history of women firefighters, collusion with slavery and slaveholders, incarceration and the climate crisis. An excellent book all around.

So good I'm sharing it/recommending it to friends,

So good I'm sharing it with a friend who's been a wild fire fire fighter and others who have been incarcerated.

Sober and personal look at the California inmate fire experience

I really enjoyed this inside look at the California penal system and the use of what is a close relative to slave labor for a critical service to the state in the form of fire fighting. The current and former inmates profiled in the book are portrayed with respect, and often framed in their own words. History of labor and prison service was fascinating particularly as someone who thinks of California as being very progressive, there is an dark underbelly it comes to prison labor.

My only complaint was that the editing of the narration indicated sections of the book, in fact sometimes as small as a few words or a sentence, we’re recorded at different times under different conditions, and the quality of the audio and volume fluctuated in very distracting manners. I wish the audio had been more consistent.