The Fire Lookout

About this book

The Cataract Peak lookout is a fourteen by fourteen room of glass on a mountain's shoulder, furnished with a bed, a stove, a two way radio, an Osborne fire finder, and the finest view in Montana. Since 1966 it has been staffed every fire season by a watcher whose job description has one line: see smoke first. Willa Crane, thirty three, three summers a lookout, has signed for the tower's last season. The detection cameras are already bolted to the ridge line towers, the algorithms are already watching, and the district's budget page, everyone agrees, is unanswerable.