The Latest: ‘Fire’ burns fitfully; ‘Find’ gets lost

Wildfire

Mary Pauline Lowry

Skyhorse Publishing; 294 pages

Mary Pauline Lowry’s “Wildfire” is a mostly formulaic novel with a tantalizing idea at its core. The protagonist, Julie, is a young college dropout who signs on as a rookie forest firefighter and battles blazes in the American West with an otherwise male crew. It’s a job that naturally attracts thrill seekers, and for Julie, the thrill comes on more than one level: She relishes not only putting out fires but starting them as well.

“Wildfire” tries to explain this mentality through backstory: Julie’s pyromania began as a response to her parents’ deaths when she was 12, and she joins the fire squad to defy the grandmother who pressured her to become a debutante. But I suspect that an obsession of this kind begins in the womb and not after any particular life event.

What arson and firefighting have in common is the potential of almost godlike power, a chance to sway the elements themselves. Some use that power for good and others for evil, and there must be a few who toe the line.

If “Wildfire” had followed its heroine into the grayer recesses of her mind, it might have hit upon some profound psychological truths. But after touching on her motivations early on, it settles into a pleasant, but not very surprising, tale of a spunky young woman who wants to fit in with the team and does, after a little hazing and a few rough-and-tumble initiations.

The most impressive part of “Wildfire” is its detailed view of life on a forest crew. Lowry, a Newport Beach resident, has served as a firefighter, and her descriptions have the natural cadence of an insider. Eavesdropping on this group, we learn bits of lingo (to relieve oneself in the woods is to “grump”) and unspoken ritual (many of the firefighters, never identified here by their real names, go by monikers like Rock Star and Hawg).

Julie’s crew, known in the field as hotshots, concerns itself with containing fires by digging ditches to prevent them from spreading. Sometimes, that means starting smaller fires to manipulate the blaze, not to mention hair-raising moments when the firefighters must keep an eye out for trees about to fall and crush them. When Julie signs on as a rookie hotshot at the start of the novel, her male colleagues view her condescendingly, and some of her early slip-ups on the job fuel their suspicions about her.

Her crewmates, though, prove more like tough but nurturing big brothers than predatory harassers, and as “Wildfire” rolls along, Julie repeatedly performs feats that win them over: rescuing a colleague from death, even winning a food-eating contest with men from a rival crew. Along the way, she brushes the edges of romance with Archie, a hunky colleague, and endures the sullenness of Tan, a former Navy SEAL whose harshness seems borne of nostalgia for the front lines.

These events make for brisk reading, but throughout them, Julie comes off essentially as a gung-ho recruit who relishes her camaraderie with the team; we don’t feel the borderline-antisocial drive of a woman who sees fire both as an adversary and a friend. Early on, she expresses glee at “the idea of setting a whole forest on fire for a good cause.” The cause goes without saying. It’s the setter, though, who makes for potentially incendiary fiction.

—Michael Miller

*

‘I’ll Find You’

Dos Gatos

Self-released; 12-track LP

I immediately had concerns when my eyes fell on the CD cover of Dos Gatos’ debut album, “I’ll Find You.”

Depicted are the two members of the Costa Mesa band — Eric Depperschmidt, holding a guitar, and David Worthington, with his hands in his pockets — surrounded by a thin, orange aura of some sort. The sunburst sky is covered with the lyrics for their song “I’ll Find You,” and the band’s name is written out like some type of graffiti.

I was hopeful that the 12 songs on the independently released album weren’t as tacky as the cover, and I was pleasantly surprised with a few tracks. The other songs, however, weren’t great.

The album opens with “Killers on the Vine,” which is by far the best song on the LP. It has an adult contemporary/modern country vibe. It’s very easy to listen to and sounds almost like an upbeat version of the Goo Goo Dolls hit “Iris.” The only thing that bugged me was when Depperschmidt and Worthington sang the words “Yeah yeah” after each line in the verse. I suppose that was done to fill dead space, but it just felt out of place.

The title track is a catchy, five-minute song that is tiring to listen to after three minutes. It sounds like a mid-1990s alternative rock song, where the guitars lean heavily on a short delay or echo-effect pedal. What makes the song unbearable after a few minutes of listening is the repetitive chord progression that sounds like it doesn’t change at all.

The same problem happens in “Hope.” Dos Gatos and the session musicians playing on the song exercise their ska abilities and lay down a very relaxing arrangement. Like “I’ll Find You,” the song gets its point across after about two minutes. After that, it just becomes background music at your luau.

A track that probably could have been cut from the album is “Lupe’s Song.” It sounds like a lounge act version of a Smash Mouth song and could easily be something you can salsa dance to, as long as you remove the lyrics.

No offense to Depperschmidt or Worthington, but “Warm Inside” is possibly the oddest song I’ve heard in 2014. Instrumentally, the track sounds great, but the lyrics have me scratching my head:

They built a big ol’ Elvis in this creepy town.

Well ain’t my country great; there’s a conga line on the interstate.

If anyone, including Worthington, can explain what that’s supposed to mean, please feel free to send me an email, because I can’t figure out what that’s trying to say or if it’s trying to say something at all.

I’ve read that Worthington is a poet in his spare time and a decent one at that. Possibly these lyrics could be better as poems or spoken-word pieces, but maybe not as songs. Dos Gatos is on the right track, with an amazing group of session musicians helping on the music, but the song structure definitely needs to get better.

— Anthony Clark Carpio