It’s not really a story about fire fighting. And a story began to take shape, starting with this central character, a smoke jumper, someone who braves the flames for something that he wants, something he must have. It says I made an “Improper Pass.” I went on to discover what a smoke jumper was, and with the help of two jumpers in particular whom I thank in the book, I learned about their work. He came after me and stopped me and I played the dumb Brit and he let me off with a warning. By the road I saw this road sign, saying “Smoke Jumpers” and I thought “what’s that?” Just then, as I looked at the sign, I saw a police car had stopped in front of me and I went past him too fast, almost took his mirror off. I know the exact date-Ap– because I got a speeding ticket! I was driving down from Montana’s Nine Mile Valley toward Missoula after a weekend of wolf watching with a wolf biologist friend. Q: What was the inspiration for your new novel, The Smoke Jumper?Ī: I had the idea for The Smoke Jumper while I was researching The Loop. Now of course I have a lot of friends there and it has become the place that I yearn to be in. But it wasn’t until I was researching The Horse Whisperer that I got to go to Montana. The real countryside was so much bigger and more dramatic. It wasn’t until my twenties that I first got the chance to visit the American West and when I did, of course, I realized that most of those TV westerns had been shot on the back lot of some LA studio.
The first writer that I really connected with was Jack London. I was also an avid reader and devoured westerns. I used to watch all those great old TV western series – Wagon Train, Rawhide, Hawkeye and The Last of the Mohicans. When I was quite young my parents moved way out in the English countryside, a long way from all my friends, so I spent a lot of time on my own, most of it playing cowboys and indians. Long before I got a chance to travel there, the images of that landscape had a great influence on me. The truth is I have always been obsessed with the place. A lot of people find it odd that an English guy should be writing about the American West. What is it that draws you to writing about the American West?Ī: This is my third novel, and the third in which the action (though not all of it) takes place in Montana.
Q: You’re English … but you don’t write “English” novels. The following is a conversation with Nicholas Evans about The Smoke Jumper.
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