PARADISE ON FIRE

Fire can change everything.

Adaugo, whose name means “daughter of an eagle,” leaves Bibi, her Nigerian grandmother and surrogate mother, to travel from New York to California with Wilderness Adventures for a three-week outdoor experience. Leo, the White owner of Wilderness Adventures, and two White college-age counselors, seek to teach Addy and five other urban Black kids enough outdoor skills to conclude their stay with a several-night backpacking trip. Tormented by nightmares of the fire that killed her parents, Addy obsesses over maps, mazes, and escape routes. Stylistically varied and impressively detailed, her sketches throughout the book highlight her talent and observational skills. She learns topographical mapping to understand the wooded landscape, and she quickly falls in love with nature. Leaving Leo, the only skilled woodsman, at base camp, the group encounters a wildfire the first night of their culminating trip, and the counselors ignore Addy’s informed advice—based on Leo’s mentorship and her focus on cultivating her navigation skills—to their peril. Inspired by California’s 2018 Camp Fire, this novel teaches about nature and climate change but centers Whiteness since Leo imparts most of the wisdom. He also relies on the leadership of the counselors, neither of whom demonstrates the passion or cultural competence to work effectively with Addy and her peers. Those who know the woods may sense this habitat is less familiar to Rhodes than the settings of her previous books.

A heart-pounding read that imparts both a healthy fear and a deep appreciation of nature’s power.