One Foot In The Black: A Wildland Firefighter's Story [Paperback]

Kurt Kamm (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 18, 2007

See the new 2012 edition of One Foot in the Black (Paperback and Kindle)

Editorial Reviews

From the Inside Flap

 

From the Back Cover

 

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 261 pages
• Publisher: Lulu.com (December 18, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1435706269
• ISBN-13: 978-1435706262
• Product Dimensions: 6 x 0.6 x 9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.5 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (44 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,120,205 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Kurt Kamm
I live in Malibu CA. I have used my contact with CalFire, Los Angeles County Fire Department, Ventura County Fire Department and the ATF, as well as my experience in several devastating local wildfires to write fact-based firefighter mystery novels. I have attended classes at El Camino Fire Academy and trained in wildland firefighting, arson investigation and hazardous materials response. I am also a graduate of the ATF Citizen's Academy

Each of my novels has a firefighter with a special skill: Wildland / Arson Investigation / Fire Paramedic / HazMat Specialist. Each mystery is told from the viewpoint of the firefighter and the story revolves around his specialty. I am currently working on my fifth novel a USAR mystery

***

My latest and fourth mystery - HAZARDOUS MATERIAL, is now available. Hazardous Material recently won the Hackney Literary Award for Best Novel of the year.

Bucky Dawson is a HazMat Specialist with Los Angeles County Fire Department HazMat Task Force 103. His station is in Lancaster, CA--an area populated with meth labs and outlaw motorcycle gangs, as well as Edwards AFB, NASA, and top-secret aerospace facilities.

Bucky--divorced and lonely--struggles with painkiller addiction. One night Task Force 103 is toned out to support a Sheriff's raid on a meth lab. Bucky thinks he sees his sister at the door of a double- wide trailer in the Mojave Desert just before it explodes.

Bucky's life is in chaos. While he searches for answers to his sister's death, he is drawn into a conflict with the Vagos, who are selling drugs in the Mojave Desert. After a confrontation in which the Vagos nearly kill him, Bucky exacts an unusual revenge that only a HazMat firefighter could accomplish.

The novel twists and turns, bringing together firefighters, a sinister aerospace engineer, the Vagos -- led by the Dwarf, their seven foot tall Sergeant at Arms, and the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department in a surprise ending you will not anticipate but you will certainly enjoy.

***

CODE BLOOD tells the story of a rookie fire paramedic who is obsessed with finding the severed foot of his first victim after she dies in his arms. His search takes him into the connected lives of a research student with the rarest blood in the world and the vampire fetishist who is stalking her. Within the corridors of high-stakes medical research laboratories, the shadow world of body parts dealers, and the underground Goth clubs of Los Angeles, the paramedic uncovers a tangled maze of needles, drugs and ritual, all of which lead to death.

CODE BLOOD was awarded FIRST PLACE in the 2012 International Book Awards in the Fiction: Cross Genre category. CODE BLOOD was also awarded FIRST PLACE in the 2012 National Indie Excellence Book Awards in the FACTION (fact based fiction) Category

***

RED FLAG WARNING - A SERIAL ARSON MYSTERY has won three first place mystery fiction awards. Los Angeles County is burning. A serial arsonist is setting the parched hills on fire. Plunge into infernos and face the smoke, heat and danger with the men of the fire lines. While NiteHeat prowls in the darkness, setting fires and taunting investigators, the Los Angeles County Fire Department Arson Unit struggles to find the fire-setter and stop the devastation.

***

My first novel, ONE FOOT IN THE BLACK - A Wildland Firefighter's Story tells the story of a young firefighter who joins a helitack crew, is called out to a massive wildland fire, and loses his captain in a burnover. After the tragedy, he succumbs to post traumatic stress and has a difficult time overcoming it. ONE FOOT IN THE BLACK has become a favorite with firefighters and other first responders.

***

I maintain a fire related website at http://www.kurtkamm.com/ It includes fire pictures sent to me from all over the world.

Contact me at [e-mail]

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

82 of 82 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars 'One Foot in the Black' shows both of the Author's Feet on Solid Ground May 24, 2008

By Grady Harp HALL OF FAMETOP 50 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

Kurt Kamm may be new to the published writing field but his initial entry, ONE FOOT IN THE BLACK, is a solid one. Kamm manages to give insight into the dangerous field of firefighting in the notorious hot bed of California's 'other disaster' while at the same time carefully exploring the influence of parental imprinting and lasting psychic injury from distant or abusive fathers. The melding of these two topics makes Kamm's first novel a strong entry into the literary arena.

Kamm's choice of location for this story - California, the land of beautiful landscapes and vistas chewed almost every year by cruel wildfires fanned by the ever-threatening Santana winds- provides an apt background for his tale of a young graduate - Greg Kowalski - from a Saginaw, Michigan high school who flees his emotionally abusive firefighter father to prove himself a worthy man as a firefighter in California. The journey toward manhood includes thwarted love relationships, the fragile discovery of true family life, the rigors of militaristic firefighter training, the physically challenging aspects of facing the powerful terror of firestorms, the bonding and camaraderie with his fellow firefighters (as well as the fraternity hazing incidents that help mold Greg's maturing response toward becoming an adult), and the agony of facing the bitter consequences of losing his best friend to the fire monster he fights. In a manner of 240 pages Kamm creates a dramatic story of one man's struggle for finding his identity as well as writing an informative and obviously well researched examination of the art and danger of firefighting.

Kamm has the gift to tell a story well: his grace in writing will doubtless move into a more sophisticated realm as he moves to his next book. The flaws here are those of pacing and disruption of story flow, a factor the author elects to overcome by naming each chapter with the names of towns that reference his character's development - not a bad technique but one that prevents steady growth of character development in favor of episodic asides that slow the momentum of the story. This is a minor, fixable flaw, and one that in the end does not detract from the fact that Kurt Kamm obviously has the talent to write exciting, stimulating, and instructive novels. Grady Harp, May 08

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The Personality of a Wildfire August 12, 2008

By Susan Haley

Format:Paperback

"Wildfires have personalities. Some of them creep around in the brush and try to lull you into a sense of overconfidence. They hide until they gain strength and then overwhelm you when you least expect it . . ." I learned this from the author on page two. On page 241, I realized I could almost write the same verbal illustration for the personalities of the book itself.

One Foot In The Black, the book, begins in an anchor point, that place from which firefighters start building a fire line, or in this case, the story. A gripping presentation of subject and plot and the two main characters comes in the `anchor point' prologue with ". . . a year ago, I saw a man go up in flames."

Then, the personalities, the "spot fires, those flashes outside the perimeter that will ignite the main fire", start creeping in. They flare up in a back and forth accounting of past and present; chopping through the brush and strengthening and developing the two main characters: Greg Kowalski, an emotionally beaten down, but driven, young firefighter trainee on a mission to prove himself to his abusive firefighter father. And a massive wildfire named Pozo. Both young Greg and Pozo grow into another fire personality . . . "they come right at you, no tricks, nothing fancy, just all-out assault."

My deep admiration for the courage of the firefighters who risk their own lives to save other lives, to save the forests and the flatlands, the structures, that are the fodder of the flames was already built-in. I have a recently retired Battalion Chief in my own family. I witnessed the majestic Tetons and Yellowstone on fire in 2001. But in One Foot In The Black, author Kurt L. Kamm took me right into the belly of the beast and revealed the very guts and personalities of the `Fire' and the men that go up against them in battle. I guarantee you; I'll never view a wild land fire or a firefighter in quite the same way ever again. One Foot In The Black is as compelling and timely a book as any you could read. With the changing climate, I'd venture to say, as you need to read.

Susan Haley, Author
RAINY DAY PEOPLE - A Novel
FIBERS IN THE WEB

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars More than a story about a firefighter. September 26, 2012

By Esther

Format:Paperback

Kurt Kamm's,'One Foot in the Black' catches the reader from the first page. While Greg, the narrator moves back and forth from his beginnings as a rookie fire fighter in training to fight wildfires to his past as a young son of an abusive father who too is a firefighter, but who beats his wife, abuses his son and terrifies his even younger daughter, the reader is engrossed in the storyline. The words are so carefully chosen that one feels the book as one reads it: the intense fear of the father by the boy, the little sister, the mother; the relief when the father leaves are ever present to the reader when the flashback to the past occurs. During the wildfire one feels the suffocating air, the intensity of the heat as it becomes a inferno, the blinding smoke and deafening sounds, Greg's deep concerns for his fellow firemen and then the crushing rush of adrenalin as he is forced to evacuate. Feeling fills each word when you read that the captain is trapped and later killed in the inferno and you along with the firefighters feel the intense grief of real loss.Your heart breaks with them and tears flow from you as as they do from them. The sense of the strong bond of family that exists between firefighters is also felt as you both mourn his loss. This is the real power of the book; through a very select choice of wording Hamm has made you feel what you are reading.
In addition the book is well-researched; not only the facts of how a wild-fire behaves and is fought, but how a firefighter is trained, & how firefighters bond into an extended family is very authentic. Hamm also has researched abuse within the family and the far-reaching consequences of it,especially for children.
The books is a fast-paced, unable to put down book, well-written far beyond what would be expected from a first novel. I am looking forward to Kurt's next book and beautiful writing style.