Nicholas Evans

The motto of the boarding school to which Tommy Bedford is dispatched is 'Fortune Favours the Brave'. It's 1959 and Tommy, a quirky loner, obsessed with cowboys and Indians, needs all the bravery he can summon. Forty years on, Tommy has to confront his boyhood ghosts when his son finds himself charged with murder.

The fire started with a single shaft of lightning. Connor Ford, the Smoke Jumper, braves the the flames to save the woman he loves but cannot have. In the wake of the fire, Connor, reckless of a life he no longer wants, dares death to take him, until another fateful day on another continent, when he must walk through fire again ...