The Firewatcher — Geoff Aggeler

Rebeca Perez, a 30 year old high school teacher, spends her summer as a fire lookout on a remote mountaintop in the wilderness. She's told that there is a great deal of criminal activity in these mountains, including marijuana production by Mexican crime families, who maintain armed guards to protect their crops and booby trap access trails. When a fire breaks out and spreads over several thousand acres, crews are summoned from several states, including Utah, where an elite fire crew is maintained at the state prison. Nathan Corday, a member of this crew, is serving a five to fifteen year sentence for armed burglary. While working on the fire line, Corday is assaulted by another inmate-kills him in self-defense, then flees across country. By chance he finds the lookout and abducts Rebeca, compelling her to lead him across the wilderness. Rebeca loathes her captor and wants only to escape from him, never imagining that she will owe her life to him and that he will enable her to recover from a tragedy that had made her suicidal. He, in turn, will owe her much. Without her he would perish in the wilderness full of danger and a stalking mountain lion. As they emerge from the wilderness, even more threatening human elements await them. Will they survive? Geoff Aggeler is a novelist, biographer, and critic. His novel Confessions of Johnny Ringo was hailed as "a masterpiece" by Anthony Burgess. He has been a fire crew leader and seasonal ranger with the U.S. Forest Service and has taught at the Utah state prison. Currently, he lives in Santa Barbara.