The book describes the events and aftermath of the South Canyon Fire on Storm King Mountain on July 6, 1994, in Colorado, which took the lives of 14 firefighters.
Those who died included nine members of the Prineville (Oregon) Hotshots: Kathi Beck, Tami Bickett, Scott Blecha, Levi Brinkley, Doug Dunbar, Terri Hagen, Bonnie Holtby, Rob Johnson, and Jon Kelso, along with a Missoula Smokejumper, Don Mackey, two McCall (Idaho) Smokejumpers, Roger Roth and James Thrash, and two members of a Helitack crew, Richard Tyler and Rob Browning.
It was made into an eponymous two-hour documentary by the History Channel that was a finalist for an Emmy award and won the Cine Master's Award as the best documentary of 1999.
John N. Maclean's father Norman Maclean wrote the 1992 book Young Men and Fire that told a very similar story about the Mann Gulch Fire of August 1949 and the 13 men who died there.
The fire occurred in Mann Gulch in the Gates of the Mountains Wilderness.