I finally set more time aside and finished One Foot In The Black by Kurt Kamm.  I’m sorry I didn’t do it sooner.  Just a quick disclaimer for our friends from the FTC, I was sent this book for free to read and review.  HOWEVER, Kurt understands and wants me to give my honest opinion about the story.  Any one that knows me or has been following this blog for even a little while knows I can only give my honest opinion):  A big thank you to Kurt for the book to review, I did enjoy it.

Many times reading it I would forget that this wasn’t based on a true story.  It read like an autobiography and I mean that in a good way.  It kept me reading easily and the first night I read over 1/3 of the book.  I got into finding out about Greg’s life and how he moved into wildland from so far across the country.  I was hooked into reading more as if this was a real person’s life.  A definite sign of a good book in my opinion.

I can’t vouch for all of the wildland lingo and actual training.  I know enough to follow along, but not enough to test if the book is completely correct.  My husband has his card, but we have it very different as far as training here locally and he’s not on the wildland team.  I know that Cali is so much different because of the massive amount of wildland firefighters needed each year.

I’ll be honest in saying I had to do some skimming towards the end.  I read enough to keep up with some conversations and read more than I really wanted in some parts.  I don’t want to give away a big part of the book, but due to personal experiences I just found I couldn’t read it and relive it.  However, I will say that I found how Greg dealt with the situation to be quite true to how I’ve seen some others work through it.  His statements and thoughts to be those I’ve heard personally in my life.

I know that my husband wanted to read this book, but after reading it I know it’s not the best idea.  Over-protective?  Probably.  It’s difficult to know if bringing up past experiences helps in the healing or hinders it.  I was unsure whether to bring up the book or just ignore it in my house after reading.  I did get to go a while and he mentioned it.  I told him how it went and he agreed it wasn’t a good idea for him.

I do recommend this book.  I really should come up with a rating scale for books as I review them.  Let’s do 1-5, 5 being the best and rare to get if ever.  I would definitely give this book a 4.  It’s worth the purchase price and worth passing on to others to read as well.  It’s a great read for both male and female alike.  I believe it shows a good battle that that many will deal with when they first get hired on if they don’t have the support network in place.

Firefighting is all about family and for some it is their only family.  The beginning years of a firefighter are so varied and chaotic as all the changes take place.  This book did a good job of dealing with some of the uniqueness of a probie firefighter and personally showed me the chaos of starting out in wildland.