Nette, leichte Lektüre, die alles enthält, was ein guter Roman braucht. Den Titel finde ich etwas irreführend, er spiegelt nur einen kleinen Teildes Buches wieder.

One of the best books I've ever read.
Beautifully written, inspiring, and a must-read.

When I got this book, I thought it was about smoke jumpers, not a novel.

But it was a good novel. Relationship between 2 smoke jumpers in Montana, and their relationship when the one jumper brings his girlfriend one summer. Ed, a smoke jumper in the summer, starving musician in NYC the rest of the year - is from a very well off family in TN. But Ed's father doesn't approve of Ed following music. Ed meets Julia in NYC and they start going out. So when Ed went to Montana, Julia went with him. She got a job nearby with a wilderness group that took troubled teens out into the wilderness to work thru their issues.

Meanwhile, Ed and Connor would jump into fires in the forests and mountains.

Turns out both Connor and Julia are attracted to each other, but hide it from each other and from Ed.

Julia is working with a troubled girl, Skye. When things finally seem to be getting better, another member of the group - a 19 yr old boy - tries to rape Skye. She runs away and Julia finds her. But both are headed into an area that had just caught fire. Ed and Connor are jumped in. Ed sees the fire spreading 1st - and is chased into a dry riverbed - he can't get to the bottom of the riverbed safely - his rope burns apart - and he falls. Meantime, Julia found Skye - but she is at a distance, and the fire catches Skye before she can get to Julia. Connor sees Skye will not make it, and drags Julia away and barely saves Julia and himself.

After the fire, Ed is badly hurt, but recovering. He has lost his sight. Julia stays with Ed at Ed's parents, until he's well enough and mobile enough to return to Montana. Ed and Julia are getting married.

Ed and Julia set up a house in Montana. Connor takes up a new career as a battlefield photographer. Ed and Julia want a kid - Ed asks Connor to give sperm, cuz Ed can't. A beautiful daughter results. After the baby is born, Connor stays away, thinking it would be best for Julia and Ed.

Ed sees his girl grow up to 10. Ed has diabetes, and it was getting worse, resulting in 2x / week dialysis. He writes a school play, and his daughter is in it. He gets thru the 1st performance, but he had skipped his dialysis. Ed dies after the show.

Julia then takes daughter Amy to do teaching to former boy soldiers in Uganda. Connor has not been in touch for 8 months. But he was known to be working in that area. An attack is made on the city, and Connor had just escaped the rebels fighting the gov't army. He finds out Julia and Amy are there, and he jumps out of an airplane to rescue them. They end up meeting. All are safe.

They return to Montana, leave the house Julia and Ed had built, and build another house. And were expecting another baby when the story ends.

One of my all time favourite books, a heart wrenching story about friendship, love and loss. Nicholas Evans really did his research as the story takes place all over the world, from Montana to Croatia to Uganda. I couldn't put it down and have since lent it to many of my friends who all concur!

One of his better novels. Ending was a little flat for me though.

Very few books have the resonance to stick with me long after I have read them. This is one of them. It's a love story that makes you wait, and keeps you turning the pages. There's a certain song that I love, and every time I hear it, I think of this book. I gave it a 4 instead of a 5 because of certain parts of the storyline that were dull, and one particular character that became a "caricature" as the book went on, to help direct the storyline where it ended up.

This is a love story. Not a bad read but got a little boring in parts. The beginning was better than the end I thought.

Stupendo, emozionante. Ben scritto. La storia sembra scontata ma ha molti colpi di scena e i contenti in cui è ambientata lasciano spazio a molte riflessioni su temi culturalmente e moralmente importanti

It's been awhile for me to read some fiction and I'm pleased to write Smoke Jumpers is an excellent read.

I had withdrawals from this book when I finished it

The honest reason I picked up this book was because I have a great respect and admiration for Smoke Jumpers and Forest Service firefighters. I even met a few that were from Missoula, which the Smoke Jumper base in the book is. Anyways, so now you know what first got me to buy the book and read it but it didn't play a significant part in the storyline. In fact this story was very different than what I had expected, in a good way. I will be completely honest and say that I was not at all impressed by the editing/grammar flaws in this book. The editing on a few parts was so bad that a complete sentence did not even make much sense and I would have to read it a few times to figure out what it was suppose to mean.
Also there are certain speech parts in the book that give away the author's own background. For example the characters are from Kentucky, Boston and Montana and yet a few lines had me thinking "that doesn't sound very country or Bostonian to me". The author, Nicholas Evans is from London/Devon, England. So as I was reading and a few of these more proper or more poised lines showed up I would be a little confused. Only after I read the book did I find out about the author and it made more sense.
With all of that said though, I still am giving this book 5 stars! Why? Because the story was amazing. From the time I picked up this book, I could not put it down. Literally I did not even barely leave my room because I didn't want to set the book down and when I did have to set it down it was very briefly (10 minutes tops). The story actually takes you through so much of the characters lives that it pulled me so close to each character and I found all of them to have endearing qualities. The story completely engulfed my attention and I had no choice but to continue because I had to know what was going to happen.
The story is almost to hard for me to put in to words. There is a love triangle of some sort so I did list this book on my romance shelf BUT it is so much more than that. It's about life in many ways. It opens up with a quick background into a few of the characters, then moves on to what drew them all together. As the plot and characters develop the story itself is more about the personal journey of the characters. Fighting fires is a very brief part of it and is really only a lead into a more delicious part of the plot. Inside the story was heartbreak, pain, death, suffering, love, joy, happiness and tough choices. Smoke Jumpers is a book that has so much in it that I could not help but be emotionally invested in the story and in the characters. I would recommend this book to anyone but I would also have to let them know of the two flaws that I have previously pointed out. Normally just one of those flaws would be enough for me to not enjoy or like a book but as I said the actual story itself was the reason I fell in love with this book.

I feel like the title of this book is misleading as the smoke jumping is really contained to the first third of the book. Either way, it's a great story of friendship, love, loneliness and brotherhood. I liked that the storytelling moved between the three main characters - the contrast between what they were presenting to the world and what was going on in their heads made for well developed characters. I can see why my friend Mel loves this book so much.