The author was more impressed with his being a team leader that doing justs to the historic Peshtigo fire. The mundane radio calls and flash backs didn"t help his effort.

I intended to write a review halfway through this book, but I kept reading expecting it would actually talk about Peshtigo, but as other reviewers have said, it's mostly about Mr. Leschak. I finished it months ago, and just ran across it again lurking in my book pile, and yet I'm compelled to write a review.

I grew up in Wisconsin in the 60-70's well aware of the lore of the Peshtigo fire. I was excited when I heard of this book, as I would love to read an historical account of the fire, ala the genre of real life accounts of trial and survival (Shackleton's "South", Albanov's "In the Land of White Death", Lundy's" Godforsaken Sea", Krakauer's "Into Thin Air", Simpson's "Touching the Void"...). This book was not what I had expected, and not what I would call a riveting book. I think the subtitle describes the book's treatment of the fire somewhat appropriately as "Echoes of the Great Peshtigo Fire...".

That said, if someone wants to read about Mr. Leschak and the life of a firefighter, you may enjoy this book, but even then, it was a bit self absorbed, and brooding. If you want to learn about Peshtigo, look elsewhere. I'm personally looking forward to reading Lutz's "Firestorm at Peshtigo".

I thoroughly enjoyed Leschak's most recent book. I felt that, in some fiery way, the 19th-century priest-protagonist was still ministering directly to the author, and to me.

This is a well-crafted, thoughtful yarn that continues to lay out our struggle with what it means to be human.

yes this book had many ways of stating life, but it was a disturbing teenage child/teen hood. I thought it could of been more appropriate and should of been rated higher than teen status.

I'd bought this book during a recent visit to Canada, while searching for Canadian writers. It seems to me like I found a very promising one!

There isn't much action in the book, but the philosophy, the outlook on life, the memories all make up for it. I couldn't put this book down. Those long train rides I have to go through every day seemed to be the shortest ever with this book accompanying me.

The way that Pearl Luke has contrasted the underground fires and our lives was amazing. By the end of the book I got the feeling that the fires burning underground were also burning in us as our memories, our childhood traumas or experiences.

It's a great book! Everybody must read this. I hope Pearl Luke keeps writing.

Working in a fire tower deep in the Canadian forest, Percy Turner uses the isolation as a wall against people, and uses the time for reflection on her past and future. She has a strained relationship with her parents, burdened by family secrets, and her childhood friend & longtime lover Marlea can't seem to choose whether to be with Percy or with her current boyfriend (not that Percy has had a stellar record keeping faithful to Marlea either). Through an internet exchange with a fellow fire tower worker, Percy slowly begins piecing her life back together. Pearl Luke's compelling story is sprinkled with fascinating facts about fires that make this tale so unique. She eloquently shows us that desire and attraction aren't always as clear cut as we like to think.

I think Forest was a great book. As I was looking for a new book to read in my class room, I saw this title so I pulled it off the shelf. (I really like the outdoors so I thought this book might be good.) And surprisingly, I was right, and I read it in about 2 days. The story is told from 2 different views, a view from the tree tops of the town Forest (squirrells) and from the ground of Forest (humans). The main characterof the ground, Amber, explores the trees of Forest and starts to find out more about the squirrells. It seems that they have there own world and language. From the squirrells' point of view, the main character, Woodbine, is very interested in Amber when she comes up in the trees to look at all the squirrells. The squirrells think that the humans are aliens and are afraid of them. Now the some of the squirrells of Forest are planning to have a war against the "aliens"! Woodbine is very much against this, he thinks the "aliens" are harmless. Down in Forest the people are starting to notice that there are tons more squirrells than usual. And Amber's dad wants to take his gun and a few other men to go and shoot the squirrells! Though Amber knows what to do, she still has time before the search and destroy party goes hunting....... to find out more read the book! I very much recommend it!

I read this book in fourth grade, four years ago, and thuroughly enjoyed it. I found it an interesting story, and more complex and enjoyable than most books that elementary students are able to read. I apreciated being able to see more than one side of the story, and the fact that the characters and their lives were not displayed as perfect. I would reccomend this book to anyone able to appreciate the lighthearted and the more suspenceful or more sad moments. Overall I enjoyed the balance of the story, and that fact that it was about animal and human interaction, but I'm not sure if the younger readers, say before second or third grade, would be able to completely grasp all of the concepts.

Just marvelous! This one for entertainment. A book kids can lose themselves in and make friends with.

The Light Beyond the Forest is a very "boring" story about knights that talk funny and have weird things happening to them. "Acts of God." Most of the time I didn't even think about the book while i was reading it.
The knights were from the Round Table in Camelot. If I rated this book I'd give it a 3 out of 10. ...If I were a knight I'd slice my hands, toung, and legs off before I read any other books in this series!

The Quest for the Holy Grail
The Light Beyond the Forest by Rosemary Sutcliff had an extremely interesting plot. The reader follows the quest for the holy grail in four different characters. Sutcliffe jumps back and forth between the quests of Sir Percival, Sir Bors, Sir Galahad and Sir Lancelot.
The time of the setting is in the medevil age. It takes place in many locations throughout the story. There are a few suspenseful twists that will keep you waiting until the end. Throughout the quest many conflicts appear between the characters and the grail.
Finally, I would recommend this book for 13+. Although it is not very long it can be confusing and hard to understand at times. This book is great for adventurous readers because of its plot and conflicts

This story is about the many exciting adventures of a few of the main knights involved in the Grail Quest. It many follows Sir Lancelot, Bors, Percival, and Galahad. The stories tell of their journeys through unfamiliar lands, saving damsels in distress, and over all trying to find the Holy Grail the one thing all the knights' desire, but only one knight can recover it.

I really enjoyed reading this book. Although at times I was confused do to the ever-changing characters and story lines. Things I really liked about this book were the excitement in the adventures and the wonderful characters. I would most definitely recommend this book to all young adult readers who enjoy a great suspenseful tale.

As another reviewer mentioned, the first half of the book is an excellent account of the Ba-Benjelle Pygmies and their music. If you have been entranced by the music of Central Africa as the author and many people around the world have, this part of the book will feed your hunger for more information.

However, not only is the second half tediously devoted to a delusional one-way "love affair," but the author also reveals himself, unintentionally, to be the worst kind of corrupting influence. By buying the Pygmies cigarettes, English machetes, western clothing, coffee, radios, and liquor, he actively promotes the very destruction of their culture that he elsewhere decries. Only late in the book does he reveal that his integration into the Pygmy society is not so total as he would have you believe earlier on -- reserving mosquito nets and hot cocoa for himself, relying on the Pygmies to wait on him like royalty, bring him meals and built huts for him while he lays around contemplating the thatched roof. He seems to revel in the role of the "rich white patron" who can command the Pygmies to dance for him at will, but then is genuinely puzzled when his intended bride rebuffs his demeaning Western imperialism.

What's not said in the book is often more interesting that what was -- only after you finish it do you begin to see the true story behind the story.

Begins with a passionate, well-written story about Sarno's move to Africa. Incredible descriptions of Pygmy music. To capture/convey the sound of that music is an achievment. But all the fine qualities of this book become irrelevant about a 1/4 of the way into Song From the Forest when Sarno is smitten by a Pygmy woman. The main focus of the next 3/4 of the book is ridiculous high-school boy-in-love nonsense and drivel: she smiled at me, she didn't smile at me, I think she cares, I don't think she cares. Who cares? Can't believe Houghton Mifflin published this crap.

To round out the experience of this auto biographical story, please buy some of the music from the forest recorded by Louis Sarno. You won't regret it.

If you've read any of the New Sun or Long Sun books, or any other well known Wolfe work, I think it's save to conclude you won't enjoy this juvenile adventure. It's even my guess that younger readers, for whom the work is apparently intended, will be unimpressed.

A well told story but that somehow left me with a feeling
of emptyness. Rather unsatisfying.
Yes, I found it in the fantasy section of my local
bookstore and yes, it is written by Gene Wolfe, but
I did not find much of the classical elements of the
fantasy genre in the book. It is in fact quite
realistic.
A little village is torn apart between a ruthless
bandit and the king's men, but a good point of the story
is that it keeps teasing the
reader into wondering who really are the good guys and who are
the bad guys of the story. Is this a romantic,
Robin Hood-like type of outlaw? This situation is resolved at
the end.

I like Gene Wolfe a lot. The Fifth Head of Cerberus is one of the best and most intricate SciFi books ever written. The Book of the New Sun is very entertaining AND literate - not a common combination for the genre. The Devil in a Forest isn't quite on the same level...

It was obviously written for a younger audience as previous reviewers have pointed out, and though it still maintains some of the level of characterization I expect from Wolfe, the writing just isn't as complex as that found in his other works. Yet, the Wolfe-themes of the indeterminancy of Good and Evil are there -- as well as a critical look at religion and superstition.

Consequently, I don't recommend it to anyone other than those who find reading other Wolfe difficult, and hardcore Wolfe fans who wish to complete the bookshelf.

As a 50 year resident of Ketchikan, I was curious how a "tree hugger" would portray the fight for the Tongass--known in these parts as the fight for a reasonable standard of living. Ms. Durbin quotes environmental organizer Donald Ross on page 172: "It doesn't take much, when you're a congressman from Kansas and you've never heard of the Tongass, to get you to vote for trees." When all is said and done, that was the tactic of the environmentalists. On page 246, she says, "Most who did [find job after the Sitka mill closed] were forced to make do with a lower standard of living than they had become accustomed to on pulp mill wages." How easily she dismisses the plight of those who live in the Tongass. There's a lot Ms. Durbin doesn't mention like the fact that only the wealthy and refugees from the 60's can afford to experience up close & personal the pristine beauty of the nation's First Park. The environmentalists have won. Sierra Club, kiss my ax!

I have lived in the Tongass,, The Tongass is being sold out to the tour package industry,, this industry is no different than any other. The people who live here through its most harsh winters are being dictated to by feel good (my Disney Land) visitors. Many wonderful Alaskan familys have been displaced because of this myth.

Journalist Kathie Durbin has written one of the finest investigative works that I have read. I'm a lawyer with biology and chemistry degrees and I find the extensive endnotes, legal references and her penchant to seek out and cite primary sources refreshing.

There is nothing here that supports any label of the author, save that of professional. This work has disturbed me for years. I have become more active in the fight to preserve the ONLY temperate rain forest left in North America because of her clear and concise use of well-supported facts.

The most disturbing fact not in the book is that the lumber industry is now nothing but a byproduct of the pulp industry.

Ms. Durbin shows us how Salmon spawning grounds destroyed out of greed and carelessness by logging right up to the spawning streams and destroying the shade that the Salmon's Redd's require, and by the disposal of low pH waste into bays and estuaries and by the effects of runoff from clearcuts (damaging sub-arctic land and water: a fragile environment, indeed).

There is no room to debate the facts...only the policy. Calling this work or its author names simply illustrates the old adage: if you can't win on the facts attack the fact-finder.

Read this book. ANWAR may be the cause celeb today, but the damage to the Tongass is going on NOW.

While the author does an admirable job of thoroughly outlining one particular version of the history of the ecological/conservancy movement and of the fallacious assumptions in the popular spiritually-overtoned meanings of "ecology" and "ecosystem" within the USA, obvious flaws in this book include the lack: of evidence for his own assertions, of positive elements in the history, of any alternative suggestions to the efforts he critiques, and of any acknowledged culpability for man due to man's science-enhanced unnatural fecundity and destructiveness or man's innate avarice.

While Chase does an admirable job here of blending a whole lot of intellectual history with a modern clash of ideology, one can't help but wonder who he is actually writing this for. At times insightful, others discursive, but always readable, it seems that the main point of this book is to sway the fencesitters and romantics in the big cities to not be so quick in sending a check upon viewing a demonstration on the evening news. Ultimately, Chase shows his hand by portraying the loggers of the Northwest as the victims, while the 'Earth First!ers' are their hedonistic nemesis bent on growing marijuana and making love in their idealized wilderness. These nefarious 'eco-terrorists' are the bad guys here, and the poor loggers clinging to the vestiges of family values are the tragic heroes of perseverence. Not exactly the critical analysis one would hope for. Nevertheless, if the reader transcends the obvious bias of the author (which seems to stem from left-over dissatisfaction and anger with liberalized 60's university politics) there are other, deeper messages well worth noting.

The main strength lies in his analysis of ecological 'science' and uncovering many of its inherant fallacies. The reader will do well to expand this theme in taking from this lengthy tome the lesson that far from being based on immutable laws, Science as a whole is as subjective as philosophy. Indeed, Science is in large part determined and shaped by philosophy. As such, while Chase spends much time debunking the environmentalists by discrediting the foundations of ecology, he ultimately hurts his own thesis by conveniently appropriating Science in justifying the plight of the logger. It is a catch-22 of sorts that Chase hides well, but he can not escape from it entirely.

All in all, it is a good read and certainly houses something for all. Those simpathetic to the logging industry will find little to disagree with, while those whose hearts lie in the ideal of pristine wilderness will come away feeling as though they've been chastized by their stodgy uncle. Somewhere in the middle is where this book has the most value as, despite the ubiquitous timbre of distaste towards environmentalists, it offers an intriguing critique of man's overdependance on 'Science' and his ability to manipulate it for whatever his or her ideals demand. Ultimately, the recognition that Science is inherantly a human construct shaped by our own capacities of comprehension demands that we stop and reconsider our motives for either cutting or saving trees, rather than simply relying on some numbers to make those decisions for us. That is the message that makes this book worth reading: Think, people, think....then act.

Alston Chase has written a wonderful book for those who want to know the truth about the environment, it's myths and realities. This is a scholarly book written like an adventure novel. It is obviously well researched and documented. . He tears through the myths and pseudo science and romanticism which has taken a theory bordering on a new science to a quasi religious/political philosphy. A man with impeccable credentials and the facts he cuts through sentiment and the dangerous dogmatic ideology of ecology looking for what the truth is re the environment. What he uncovers is a tyrannical mind set based on little more then romanticized nature worship. Without a clear and logical thought process in the search for the truth it will be difficult for future environmentalism to be relegated to anything but a "know nothing" philosophy demanding strict obedience to unproven bad science which in the end will work against saving the environment. He is right on when he says what we need are "livable communities", not enclaves of nature crammed next sprawling development. He also suggests that modern environmentalism is its own worst enemy and the very thing it does not want, unchecked development, is what it will get unless it becomes less romantic and more realistic. I have read the book 3 times and get something new each time. For those who want the truth and not propaganda. Be prepared to have some of your favorite environmental theories blown away. Enjoy the ride. I did.

I've never read Karen Harper before and when I saw the summary of
this one I thought it looked good. I was wrong. There is way
too much dialogue in some scenes of this book and the characters
don't show a lot of emotion. This book has a few parts that were
mysterious, the rest seemed dull and drawn out. I was happy that the author didn't include profanity or any brutal violence, but instead of a classic thriller she ended up writing a predictable story. I hope her other books are better.

The Stone Forest was my first book by Karen Harper and based on this, I'll certainly give her another try. Jenna Kirk, the protagonist, is struggling to make an independent life for herself, after a traumatic childhood kidnapping. Someone does not want her to achieve her goal. Is it her dead sister's boyfriend, her childhood friend, the family shrink, or an unstable townsperson? Suspects, and suspense, abound.

I really liked this book. It was suspenseful, but not gory and had a SWEET love story - not full of graphic sex. It kept me interested until the very end. If you like Carlene Thompson or MHC you will enjoy this book.

This is a decent story telling book, completely subjective. It leaves a lot to be desired and a more factual OBJECTIVE anthropology book would be necessary to understand the yanomamo indians because the author tells her story but doesn't explain the signifigance of myths, rituals, and customs.

HOnestly, I enjoyed this book. It was just that I read it when I was about 16 years old. It was fun, yes. Yet I got the strange feeling that I could have written that book after just my intro to anthropology course in my freshman year in college. I could excuse myself to the readers that I was not going to use orthodox anthropological methods, and then let my imagination run wild. So much for the power and luck idea. All tough CAstaneda readers like myself might find themselves a bit disappointed. The Yanomamo is indeed one of the best studied groups in the world! You could watch an educational video and write a review with some made up moments with a similar result true for this book that it was made through dreaming. So, all teens, go buy the book. Some cool sex with the natives. Some drugs. THat is all. Dn't fall in love with it:)Hey, I am not arguing that the information is false, just the way it is presented looks kinda phoney... well, the gal did a good job, but could have been better, she is a sorcerer after all! But I guess they do not make the witches the way they used to anymore.

Although I found the book interesting and very readable, I was often reminded of Carlos Castaneda. I knew nothing about Ms. donner previously so I was surprised to find that she was acquainted with Mr. Castaneda. The book probably is fairly accurate as far as the cultural anthropology is concerned but there are many areas that are not believable. I would recommend this book as a light read about the Yanomamo.