[Breathing Fire is] gripping and heartbreaking. No elegiac spin on young women and fire, this hard-hitting book weaves together the stories of women . . . with a broader examination of [California’s] history of exploiting incarcerated laborers, as well as the role that prison firefighters play during our time of intensifying, climate-change-fueled wildfires.”
—MATT JAFFE, San Francisco Chronicle
"Lowe's compassionate and deeply empathetic book . . . show[s] how a significant portion of California's response to the ravages of climate change has been built upon the backs of incarcerated labor . . . [Breathing Fire] brings into sharp relief how an entire class of people are performing labor under conditions approaching complete enslavement. Her important book also points to the uncomfortable truth that the front lines of the fight against climate change are peopled with those society has forgotten."
—LORRAINE BERRY, The Minneapolis Star Tribune
"Riveting from the first page, Jaime Lowe’s Breathing Fire is an unsentimental and vividly human portrait of a group of women in an inmate firefighting program that every Californian relies on—a program that the state presents as transformative and redemptive even as these women risk their lives for dollars a day and emerge into abandonment. Lowe’s writing is kinetic, her focus is resolutely intimate even as her frame remains far-reaching, and her reporting is essential. This book is a lasting entry in the pantheon of California nonfiction, that literature of desperation and promise and emergency."
—JIA TOLENTINO, author of Trick Mirror
“In recent years, women inmates have joined the army of prison labor that California relies upon to fight its wildfires, whether defending the Sequoias or celebrity homes on the Malibu Coast. It is dangerous, relentless work that ultimately depends upon the arduous personal transformations that create unity and fighting spirit within each fire crew. Against the background of recent megafires, Lowe chronicles the transcendent moments of triumph and tragedy that stir ambitions of a new life, but then recounts the systemic cruelty that undermines every hope of translating their new skills and hard-won self-confidence into civilian careers. Lionesses betrayed.”
—MIKE DAVIS, author of City of Quartz and Ecology of Fear
"Breathing Fire is a powerful examination of the lives of the Malibu 13, whose labor, like that of the hundreds of incarcerated women who live (and sometimes die) fighting wildland fires, keeps the residents of the State of California safe each year. But this book is so much more. It is the story of friendship, and of prisons, jails, and foster homes, and of love and family life and labor in the wake of mass incarceration. Lowe’s vivid and sensitive account walks us through a history of confinement in California through the arrest, imprisonment, release and collective mourning of a generation of women caught in the gears of the American criminal justice system."
—REUBEN JONATHAN MILLER, author of Halfway Home: Race, Punishment and the Afterlife of Mass Incarceration
"With dogged reporting, and an unforgettable cast of strong women as its memorable characters, Breathing Fire tells a powerful story. The heroes here are women inmates fighting for their lives on burning hillsides, and inside prison yards and bad relationships. They seek redemption with chainsaws, shovels and axes in hand. Jaime Lowe tells their story with respect and compassion, and with a sharp eye for injustice."
—HÉCTOR TOBAR, author of Deep Down Dark
"Jaime Lowe's deeply reported, intimate account of the women on the front lines of climate change and its horrific tolls knocked the wind out of me. Breathing Fire is about risk and loss and injustice and terror, told through keenly inscribed individual stories; it is riveting and heartbreaking."
—REBECCA TRAISTER, author of Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women's Anger and All the Single Ladies: Unmarried Women and the Rise of an Independent Nation
"We see and hear and breathe with the women Jaime Lowe profiles as they fight forest fires while also doing time. Her deep reporting and immersive storytelling animates every page of this intimate and powerful book, which is also a snapshot of unnerving environmental change."
—EMILY BAZELON, author of Charged: The New Movement to Transform American Prosecution and End Mass Incarceration
"A book as humane, generous and brave as its heroines, Breathing Fire is the journalism we need now, an urgent story from our carceral front lines given to us by a writer brilliantly alert to vulnerability and strength. A very good book about fire; a profound book about courage and care."
—JEFF SHARLETT, New York Times bestselling author of The Family
"There is no bleaker glimpse of the superheated future we're all hurtling toward than the fact that female inmates, many of them women of color, are earning roughly $1 an hour protecting the rest of wealthy California from its growing wildfires. Jaime Lowe's powerful, immersive book makes it impossible to ignore the reality of their lives—and the reality that we can do better."
—MCKENZIE FUNK, author of Windfall: The Booming Business of Global Warming
“A detailed and infuriating depiction of America’s inhumane practice of deploying inmate firefighters . . . Lowe writes compellingly . . . [Breathing Fire] is a story of 21st-century chain gangs in the star-studded hills of Malibu battling the consequences of climate change and of a country lost in the mire of seemingly endless mass incarceration.”
—KIRKUS REVIEWS
Breathing Fire brings nuance to the lived experiences of the women inmates who are helping the state face an increasingly grim future of wildfire, and to Jones, the first of them to die on the job. But it never loses sight of the central truth: they should never have been asked to do this in the first place.
—ERIN BERGER, Outside
04/26/2021
Journalist Lowe (Mental) tackles climate change, mass incarceration, and the “war on drugs” in this deeply reported if uneven account of California’s inmate firefighting crews. Focusing on incarcerated women who make up this “near invisible workforce,” Lowe recounts how Shawna Lynn Jones died in 2016, less than two months before her scheduled release, while fighting a fire in Malibu. Other profile subjects include Whitney (no last name given), a former supply analyst for Patagonia and ultra-marathoner who served time for gross vehicular manslaughter, and Marquet (no last name given), who tithed the roughly $2 per hour she made fighting fires. Lowe traces the origins of California’s inmate firefighting program to a labor shortage caused by WWII, and contends that the state has saved billions of dollars by paying inmate firefighters paltry wages. She also critiques the criminal justice system at large, documenting prison overcrowding and inadequate health care for inmates, but the book is at its strongest when it leaves aside the statistics and stays focused on the lives of prisoners as they train to fight wildfires, reflect on their crimes, and struggle to find gainful employment after prison. The result is a powerful and affecting portrait of the “inherent flaws” of using prison labor to save California from climate disaster. (June)
07/01/2021
In 2016, 22-year-old Shawna Lynn Jones became the first woman inmate firefighter to die in the line of duty. Within months of her death, Lowe (Mental) began interviewing incarcerated people on Jones's firefighting crew and correctional workers. Her book shares the story of the women who do the same work as professional non-incarcerated firefighters but earn a pittance. Lowe details California's long history of using unpaid or low-paid inmate labor and describes the ways the prison system fails these people; upon their release, former inmate firefighters are almost never allowed to transfer their firefighting skills to gainful employment. The narrative is well-paced; readers can visualize what these women endure in training, in the field, and at home. Lowe profiles several of the women and provides their backstories, complete with interviews conducted throughout the pandemic. It might be difficult for readers to keep track of the figures as the book switches in and out of different people's narratives, but it is well worth the effort. VERDICT Readers who want a comprehensive understanding of political agendas and the effects of racism in the U.S. justice system will appreciate this book and will want to share their new knowledge with others. A powerful, well researched work for justice-minded readers.—Elissa Cooper, Helen Plum Memorial Lib., Lombard, IL
2021-05-19
A detailed and infuriating depiction of America’s inhumane practice of deploying inmate firefighters.
In this expansion of her work for the New York Times Magazine, journalist Lowe delves into the stories of the incarcerated women fighting California’s frequent, deadly wildfires. At great personal risk, these women remain prisoners as they battle flames and endure grueling physical challenges. The author traces the histories of women in different “camps” across the state, illustrating the overrepresentation of women engaged in this extremely dangerous work. Even as they risk their lives fighting fires, they receive a negligible amount of training compared to “free” firefighters. The numbers of incarcerated firefighters are shocking: “Depending on the year, inmate firefighters make up as much as 30 percent of California’s wildland fire crews.” Lowe chronicles her discussions with a wide range of women. Some believe in the program’s ability to prepare inmates for new ways of life, providing access to nature and employable skills. Many others point out the exploitation of their labor, sexual abuse, drug use, and constant danger. The stories share horrifying, dehumanizing parallels with slave labor—especially analogous given the disproportionate number of American prisoners who are Black. However, Lowe does not examine race until halfway through the book, which weakens the critical and rhetorical power of the story as a whole. The eventual list of myriad ways the prison system differentially targets Black Americans would be more effective if this analysis framed the critique rather than being compartmentalized midway through. Nevertheless, Lowe writes compellingly, including appropriately heartbreaking details of these women’s lives, what is taken from them, and how they risk their lives for $2.56 per day. This is a story of 21st-century chain gangs in the star-studded hills of Malibu battling the consequences of climate change and of a country lost in the mire of seemingly endless mass incarceration.
A disturbing portrayal of America’s exploitative prison system and the incarcerated women fighting California’s wildfires.
