Daniel Gumbiner’s New Novel ‘Fire in the Canyon’ Looks at Life After Wildfire

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KQED

Politics, News, News Commentary

4.6 • 656 Ratings

🗓️ 2 October 2023

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In Daniel Gumbiner’s latest novel, “Fire in the Canyon,” wildfire acts as a plot catalyst and a character. The story follows Ben Hecht, a former pot farmer turned grape grower in California’s Gold Country, who is just getting by when wildfire sweeps through. Both the Hecht family and the land they live on exist in a “state of fragile equilibrium,” in which security is both hard-earned and precarious. We’ll talk to Gumbiner about the emotional costs of climate change and wildfire in California. Guests: Daniel Gumbiner, author, "Fire in the Canyon" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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0:00.0	Support for KQED podcasts comes from San Francisco International Airport.
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0:31.2	a newlywed Jewish couple struggling to make a life in Georgia. When Leo is accused of an
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0:57.0	From KQED.
1:00.0	From KQED.
1:01.0	From KQED in San Francisco, I'm Alexis Madrigal.
1:15.1	How do you tell the story of climate change?
1:17.6	We talk about catastrophic moments, rapid transformation, but even a few years is a lot of days, a lot of hours.
1:25.5	Times when you're doing something else or many things, Daniel Gumbiner's
1:29.2	new novel, Fire in the Canyon, is a book about a gold country town on the front lines of this war
1:34.3	we are waging on ourselves. But it's a quiet, meditative book. The central character is an old
1:39.2	hippie, a pot grower, a grape tender. There's action and drama, but it's not a collage of IPCC report scenarios.
1:45.6	It's a real and human story about what happens when a family's own unspectacular life becomes
1:51.5	part of the global drama of global warming. Gumbiner joins us next after this news.
2:08.1	Welcome to Forum. I'm Alexis Madrigal and welcome to a pledge drive-free few months here at the station.
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