Fire Tower

ARTICLES, REVIEWS, ESSAYS, & PRESENTATIONS on TEACHING ENGLISH

Title: Fire Tower by Jack Kestner , Clinch Mountain Press., Emory, VA, 2007, 978-0-9724765-4-6, 160 pp.

http://www.clinchmountainpress .net [This book was originally published by Funk and Wagnall’s in 1960 and is republished by permission of HarperCollins.]

Genre: Fiction

A sixteen-year-old young man is recuperating from an illness that prevents him from returning to school the second semester of his junior year in high school. He goes to work as a lookout at a remote fire tower in Southwest Virginia . He learns the job quickly and likes doing it. However, two unexpected visitors involve him in a kidnapping and hostage situation that would challenge anyone. In the end he saves not only himself but several people from death in the middle of a serious forest fire.

Ages: Ages 10 and up

Central Character: This story is told from the perspective of a sixteen-year- old boy who is recovering from a medical problem that prevented him from doing his best as an athlete during the fall football season. Even though he has been treated and spent three months in a hospital, he is not sure he can gain all of his health back and measure up to the demands of the job as a fire lookout.

Plot: Duncan Akers takes a job as a seasonal fire lookout at a fire lookout tower on the top of Clinch Mountain in Southwest Virginia . Recuperating from an illness that landed him in the hospital for an extended stay, he is not sure he can do the job, but upon the recommendation of his doctor and the permission of his family, he takes the job. He quickly adapts, and things go well until Garland Vickers, a convicted criminal, escapes from a work detail in Pulaski County , Virginia . Vickers has kidnapped the daughter of a couple, Rebecca, and stolen their car. He does not want them to call the police before he has the chance to get back and confront his former friend, the man who actually committed the shooting and robbery for which Vickers was convicted. Now, he plans to confront this man and exact his own personal justice. He also has stolen some dynamite from Rebecca’s father, and he uses it to blow the state police cruiser chasing him off the road. To avoid capture, he takes up a trail on the side of the mountain where Duncan is working. The car stops running, and he is forced to continue on foot. He, his hostage Rebecca, and her cat, Ernestine, make their way up to the cabin where Duncan is living at the base of the fire lookout tower.

In a relatively short time, Duncan figures out what is going on and realizes that his new male visitor is the escaped convict Vickers. Duncan tries to escape with Rebecca after drugging Vickers, but Vickers catches them before they can leave the area. He then uses the gun that Duncan had with him for protection to force Duncan and Rebecca to join him during his exit. He starts a fire to cover his actions, but the fire gets out of control. During their ride in Duncan ’s jeep down the mountain, there is an accident where Vickers’s leg is pinned between the jeep and a huge rock. Duncan sends Rebecca down the mountain to meet up with fire fighters and the police who are trying to make their way up to mountain to free Duncan and the little girl. The fire worsens, and yet Duncan is able to use his understanding of the geography of the woods he knows well and his knowledge of how to survive in the wilderness to save not only himself but also some of the firefighters who have become trapped by the fire.

Touchy Areas: I don’t think there are any touchy areas. There is some violence as Garland Vickers strikes Duncan , which causes his eye to swell shut, after he recaptures Duncan and the little girl after their attempted escape. However, even though this is described in a very real way, there is a sense of humanity communicated by Vickers that suggests he is not as bad as some of his actions would suggest. No one is ultimately harmed in a lasting way in this book.

Related Young Adult Titles: Gary Paulsen’s The Crossing. New York : Orchard, 1987; Gary Paulsen’s Canyons. New York : Delacorte, 1990; Will Hobbs’s The Maze, HarperCollins, 1999.

Movies: For different reasons, Dante’s Peak, 1997, staring Pierce Brosnan and Linda Hamilton; River Wild, 1994, staring Kevin Bacon and Meryl Streep

Websites: http://www.willhobbsauthor.com; http://www.usu.edu/westlit/conferencesgeneral.htm. This is the website of the Western Litearure Associaton, which will list other resources that might be of interst to readers of Kestner’s book. The website of the publisher is http://www.clinchmountainpress .net.

Art: Poets on the Peaks, text and photographs by John Suiter, Counterpoint Press, 2002, ISBN 1582431485, is a wonderful book that that describes the places where many of our important writers of the Beat Generation in the late 50s and early 60s lived and worked early in their careers. The pictures of these places are spectacular.

Evaluation: I really like this book. Even though it was originally published nearly 50 years ago, this book reads like a very modern work. I think young people who can imagine themselves working in a fire tower will find this book believable and compelling. Also, though set it the Appalachian area, this story could take place anywhere that either currently or in the past has had fire towers. Of note, the land where this story takes place is currently in the process of being purchased by the Commonwealth of Virginia and will eventually be turned into a Virginia state forest and wildlife area.

Reviewed by: Edgar H. Thompson, Emory & Henry College , ehthomps@ehc.edu

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