Originally from Syracuse, New York, Ms. Strader moved to Prescott, Arizona with her family in 1972. In 1976, she became one of the first women hired on a U.S. Forest Service fire crew. Linda Strader holds two degrees: a Bachelor of Landscape Architecture, and a Masters in planning, from the University of Arizona. In addition to writing, she is a landscape architect, certified arborist, and watercolor artist. She currently lives in the same area where her Forest Service career began.
Summers of Fire: A Memoir of Adventure, Love, and Courage, was released on May 1st, 2018 by Bedazzled Ink Publishing. Her publishing history includes many web articles about writing memoirs, her publishing and marketing experiences, and wildland firefighting. She has given talks on these topics to many clubs, including the American Association of University Women. Parade Magazine published an excerpt in 2018, and the PBS show Arizona Illustrated featured her segment “Wildland Firefighter,” in the fall of 2019.
The prequel to Summers of Fire, Uprooted: A New Life In The Arizona Sun, was released by Bedazzled Ink Publishing on December 1st, 2021.S
Synopsis of Summers of Fire:
Linda Strader is one of the first women hired on a fire crew with the U.S. Forest Service. A naïve twenty-year-old in the mid-1970s, she discovers fighting wildfires is challenging—but in a man’s world, they became only one of the challenges she would face. Battling fire is exhilarating, yet exhausting; the discrimination is real and sometimes in her face. Summers of Fire is an Arizona to Alaska adventure story that honestly recounts the seven years she ventures into the heart of fires that scorch the land, vibrant friendships that fire the soul, and deep love that ends in devastating heartbreak.