| Title | : | The Smoke Jumper |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0440235162 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780440235163 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 576 |
| Publication | : | First published August 21, 2001 |
His name is Connor Ford and he falls like an angel of mercy from the sky, braving the flames to save the woman he loves but knows he cannot have. For Julia Bishop is the partner of his best friend and fellow “smoke jumper,” Ed Tully. Julia loves them both–until a fiery tragedy on Montana’s Snake Mountain forces her to choose between them, and burns a brand on all their hearts.
In the wake of the fire, Connor embarks on a harrowing journey to the edge of human experience, traveling the world’s worst wars and disasters to take photographs that find him fame but never happiness. Reckless of a life he no longer wants, again and again he dares death to take him, until another fateful day on another continent, he must walk through fire once more…
The Smoke Jumper Reviews
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This story started out promising. A cute romance develops between two likeable characters and then a smokin hot "complication" gets introduced. From there it went all down hill. There needed to be more of everything, more passion, more tension, and more heartache. I found what I was reading to be less than gripping and I always found a reason to do something else other than read it. This story is about a blind man's wife falling in love with his best friend. How can you bore your readers with a plot like that??? Not only was I bored, but the ending was just awful! Nicholas Evans made his reader yearn for a relationship between characters that was wrong. I wanted the best friend to get the girl, but how could I wish such a betrayal on a blind man who loved and needed his wife and was so inspirational? I didn't feel good about it. I wanted something to happen to make the husband less likeable, or I wanted him to leave and find a woman who could really love him back the way he deserved. Instead the husband dies and the best friend comes in and takes his place. Was this the ending I was rooting for? Is that suppose to be a happy ending? I thought it was awful. I felt like the author wanted me to be happy the husband died. How horrible. -
Part 1: fantastic. Part 2: meh. Part 3: good God.
Here is one paragraph (excuse me, sentence) from the book:
In the grass and dust yard of the church stood a white cement figure of Jesus with his arms spread in welcome and the boy stopped beside it and would go no farther and Connor photographed him and then photographed the dogs and vultures that came hurtling from the open doors of the church and photographed the soldiers chasing them and yelling and shooting at them but mostly missing.
This is ONE SENTENCE. The word "and" is in it 9 times. This is just one paragraph from the book. Great day where did this man go to college and who taught him to write? He would also write things like: "Sylvie Guillard was pushing forty and was photographing wars while Connor was still in fourth grade." This led me to think she was around 55 years old but NOOO. Mr. Dangling Modifier here just doesn't know how to construct a sentence.
This book started off GREAT. The opening chapter hooked me right in and I thought it would be wonderful, a hair-raising story full of cliff hangers and it just veered here, veered there, then "WHAT the hell just happened?" It was like he didn't know where to go. The entire Part 1 could have, and should have, been the book. He should have left Connor out of the picture.
UGH. Read if you dare. I hope someone shows Mr. Evans what a comma is one day. -
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I was a little hesitant about reading this book because quite a few readers categorize it as romance. It's not romance. Yes, there is a love story—two love stories—but there's so much more going on. It feels more like a suspense novel.
I loved this book. It's well-written. It takes the reader to many different places: Montana, New York—even faraway Sarajevo and Africa. I loved Connor's passion and admired Ed's perseverance. Both men were charming; I honestly believed Julia loved both.
This book is a must-read. -
I don't enjoy giving books a one star rating, but I honestly didn't enjoy this novel at all. I knew I wouldn't like it after page 70 or so and yet I kept reading because I hate to abandon a book. I was hoping the story would grown less sentimental and cliche as it progressed but it actually got worse.
There is an audience for every book and I'm definitely not the right kind of audience for this novel.
I don't see the point in listing every thing that irked me the wrong way because I would be here all day. I can understand some people might like this book, but I found nothing in it for me. I'm not a romance reader, so maybe that is it. This book is basically a love triangle between two smoke jumpers and best friends ( Ed and Connon) and Julie. Ed is a diabetic piano player who never did any sports and was teased all his life for his feminine hobbies and interests. Ed one day decides he likes the outdoors and becomes a smoke jumper during his summer- not unbelievable at all. Connor is Ed's best friend but he falls madly in love with Ed's girlfriend Julia as soon as he sees her. Naturally Julia feels the same way about Connor, despite loving Ed and being the perfect girlfriend to him.
Seriously, Julia is one of the most stupid female protagonist I have ever came across. She is supposedly an educator of some kind, but she thinks it is a great idea to drag a minority (half native American)abused fifteen year old girl Skye across wildness with a group of problematic seventeen year old boys (many of whom are recovering addicts and criminals). The idea is that peer pressure and wildness helps. How exactly? Why anyone would think that putting a fifteen year old girl in wildness with a group of young criminals with a lot of opportunities to assault her, will result in anything else than an assault on her is beyond me.
Julia is clearly familiar with the fact Skye was abused all her life, but does little to actually help Skye except to take her on some quest where they all cry and become instantly close in the most unbelievable way. When this abused girl is clearly assaulted by one of the boys while they were alone (why was that even an option?) and returns to the group traumatized, Julia does NOTHING! Well, not exactly nothing, Julia makes it possible for the boy to insult and make fun of Skye in front of the whole group....and then it is a big surprise that the girl runs away in the wilderness. That isn't good enough for Julia for there are more child lives to risk in this novel! Taking a child into a war zone because she cannot wait for a certain person to call her back is another 'genius' part on Julia's part. Does the author really think that women are this stupid?
Don't get me even started on the way this author kills his characters every time when it is convenient for the plot. I call it lazy writing! -
Three friends are connected by one summer’s events on a Montana mountain. Ed Tully and Connor Ford are smoke jumpers who both love the same woman. Julia is a social worker who is taking a group of “at risk” teens on a several day hike in the wilderness in an effort to rehabilitate them. When the draught-stricken forest is hit by lightning, the smoke jumpers have to come to the rescue.
You know where this is headed, don’t you? There will be tragedy, lots of guilt, miscommunication, silent (but very meaningful) looks. People behave stupidly and take unnecessary risks … not just with their own lives but with children’s lives. And of course, true love will win out.
Just unbelievable claptrap.
Actually I was pretty interested in the beginning and wish that Evans had found a way to explore the smoke jumpers, and the at-risk kids. But that ends on page 166 and then parts two and three get progressively more soap opera ridiculous. I rolled my eyes so much I made myself dizzy. -
A frustrating read, punctuated by too many plot twists where you have to suspend your disbelief. The story jumps around and regularly loses what small momentum it had built up as the reader is flung forward years or thousands of miles, or both.
The Smoke Jumper is at least 100 pages too long, cluttered by pointless insights which seem to be lifted from a teenager's diary, and the denouement is signposted in flashing neon lights throughout the book - although how Evans reaches that point was too outlandish to be engaging.
There's a good book in here somewhere, but Evans took a promising scenario and got lost in a fog of his own creation. -
Knjiga je je zaista divna, ljubavna, zivotna, tragicna ali sa srecnim zavrsetkom. Ali... ovo nije prva knjiga u kojoj je pisac 'morao' da se dotakne teme rata u Bosni i 'krvolocnih' Srba - pa molicu lepo zar su u tom ratu samo Srbi bili krivi!!! Pa i dogadjanja u Ruandi i Ugandi kao da su samo prenesena iz nekih novinskih izvestaja, a ima slicnih prica i u jos nekim knjigama koje sam citala. Za mene, samo su pozari bili nesto novo sto do sada nisam procitala vec negde.
I pored ovih zamerki, knjiga ipak zasluzuje svih 5 zvezdica! -
I loved the first half of this book. The second half of the book, while connected, should have been a totally separate book by it's self.
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Absolute drivel.
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Diana had read The Horse Whisperer and bought Nicholas Evans' succeeding two books on a bookstore excursion that feels like eons ago. Remembering how much she had sung the praises of The Horse Whisperer, I gave Evans' third a go--and was not disappointed in the slightest. I'm currently working through authors on my shelf from Z backwards (having just completed a circuit in the other direction and then reversing it to make my way back to the Es). I try to be highly selective with what I read at a given point. I don't reach for the hard stuff unless I feel up to it. Having just tackled an 840 page book, I wasn't sure what I was thinking in reaching for a 560 page book, but it's not the length, after all, that I should be considering anyway but rather the breadth of the thing. Diana's a Jane Austen fan. I read Persuasion and hated it, couldn't stick with it at all, and thus my reservations about this one would be that I'd find Evans similarly impenetrable and over my head. Austen and her ilk make me feel like an idiot. Evans, however, couldn't have been more different. I know, of course, there is no basis for comparison between Victorian literature and modern fiction, but I thought perhaps there would be crossover elements uniquely tailored to Diana and her book club's tastes, and I don't like books that require me to diagram a sentence in order to enjoy them. Evans doesn't. Yes, his fiction is rich and textured, but God bless him, he's an everyman with a soul. I haven't read The Horse Whisperer, but Redford must have got it right because the heroism and stalwartness of his male characters and the hardy steel of his females are on display just as much here as in the film. This is romance in a pure sense. Mild spoilers may await, so beware.
He layers his characters with integrity and heart, even in their weakest moments, such as the periods of self-pity experienced by Ed after his fall, and especially as Julia and Connor battle the urge within to requite their forbidden love. The greatest suspense often comes from whether or not characters are going to do the right thing, and what lifts Evans' romance above the pornographic swill commonly categorized as such is that they often do, although there are prices to pay and sacrifices to make that may cost them their lives. As a Christian, I can see these people being called to account for their actions and being commended for them. THAT is romantic to me. Yes, the gratification comes, and boy is it ever delayed! But it's delayed for all the right reasons, and by the time you reach it, you're so swept up in the mixture of tragedy and suspense it's taken to get there that Evans can pretty much do whatever he wants with you. His book is obviously well-researched in the matters of smoke jumping, mountain fires, parachutes, photojournalism, and recent African history and political, but he doesn't show it off, like going into some tangential chapter to explain what all this stuff is. It's inter-woven as needed in the story but it never subverts it so that never once do we lose track of the characters we have almost immediately fallen in love with. There's a bit of Ed, Connor, and Julia in all of us at different points in our lives, and our hearts bleed and break for them. I'd venture to say there's a bit of Skye in us, too, and the way the book finds redemption for her and Julia's experience with her will no doubt bring tears to your eyes. Read this and then share it with the one you love. Make him or her read it, too, something I plan on doing with Diana. And then hit the hay and thank God you've made it safely together.
One more thing: There are two sex scenes in this book, and the first one almost ruined my perfect score, but the second one purposely redeems it. I don't like sex scenes were people are just throwing the f-word at each other, not because I'm a prude but because it is seriously unromantic. Well, it was intended to be a little off-putting, and I commend Evans for having the confidence in himself to make it right by the end. -
Απο πυροσβεστης στη Μοντανα ο Κονορ βρεθηκε στη Βοσνια κ στην Ουγκαντα το απολυτο ξενερωμα. Ισως να φταιει το τριγωνο. παντα τα αντιπαθουσα αυτα τα σχηματα..
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Started out really well, but then very quickly took a dip into the cliche and everything for some reason had to be over the top meaningful and emotional, in the worst way possible. The characters in this book makes choices that does not fit who they are, and as a reader they are hard to care for at all. The story goes crazy and unbelievable, and tries to justify things that are basically twisted and sick. Further down you can read just exactly why I think this, if you don't mind spoilers.
- Spoilers beyond this point -
Also that bullshit thing where Julia is dating Ed, then falls in love with Connor but decides to stay with Ed anyhow. Then there is a big fire where Ed gets blinded while doing his job and a young girl gets killed. Julia somehow manages to blame all of this on herself even though none of it was her doing and she therefore marries Ed out of guilt.
She builds an entire life and marriage around feeling guilty for loving her husbands best friend more than him. And then, sick and twisted as it is, when Ed turns out to be sterile, she has a baby with Connor, to even further her bond with him...
Oh and despite her already basically cheating on Ed with her every waking thought of Connor, we conveniently avoid any actual cheating because Ed dies at a super young age (And the cause of death does even get explained, he just dies, how convenient).
Then Julia, as the super great responsible mom she is, take her and Connors daughter with her to Afrika, straight into a war zone, just because Connor was there once, many years ago, just hoping he will return so she can finally get some man meat after years of stupidly avoiding her feelings. And when the war then moves right up to her front door, does she leave to protect her daughter? NO. Mother of the freaking year. No she leaves at the very last minute, in a very very dangerous situation that could have gotten them both killed.
Oh oh and get this, then Connor (Big hero he is) jumps out of a chopper straight into the war zone to save them, and he does and oh how amazing it is. Then with the daughters blessing the two "star crossed lovers" finally work out the years of sexual frustration and lust, whoopti freaking doo... -
"The Smoke Jumper" centers on two best friends, Ed and Connor. Ed falls in love with Julia, a woman who works as a rehab counselor for troubled youth. She takes kids out hiking and asks them questions like "How does that make you feel?" One of the kids, Skye, is killed during a forest fire and during the same fire; Ed is injured and becomes handicapped. Julia marries him, even though she is secretly in love with Ed's best friend, Connor.
We learn that Ed is sterile, so he and Julia ask Connor to be a sperm donor so that they can have a child. Julia eventually gives birth to a daughter, and heads off to war-torn Uganda so that she'll feel closer to the now-absent Connor since he once took a series of photographs there."
I did not like this book and I’m not going to waste my time writing a review on this when my friend explained it perfectly in her review.
Christina’s Review:
This story started out promising. A cute romance develops between two likable characters and then a smokin hot "complication" gets introduced. From there it went all downhill. There needed to be more of everything, more passion, more tension, and more heartache. I found what I was reading to be less than gripping and I always found a reason to do something else other than read it. This story is about a blind man's wife falling in love with his best friend. How can you bore your readers with a plot like that??? Not only was I bored, but the ending was just awful! Nicholas Evans made his reader yearn for a relationship between characters that was wrong. I wanted the best friend to get the girl, but how could I wish such a betrayal on a blind man who loved and needed his wife and was so inspirational? I didn't feel good about it. I wanted something to happen to make the husband less likable, or I wanted him to leave and find a woman who could really love him back the way he deserved. Instead the husband dies and the best friend comes in and takes his place. Was this the ending I was rooting for? Is that supposed to be a happy ending? I thought it was awful. I felt like the author wanted me to be happy the husband died. How horrible.
I agree Christina!!! Couldn't of said it any better. -
Can a person love two people at the same time, and how does one choose just one? Julia meets Ed first and is in relationship with him when she meets his best friend Connor and has a "love at first sight" experience. Connor reciprocates this feeling, but both he and Julia manage not to pursue a love that would hurt Ed. The summer of life-altering events finds the three in Montana where Ed and Connor are smoke jumpers, something that they've been doing for several years together. Julia is working with troubled teens in a outdoors outreach program. A devastating fire forces choices that seem to doom any satisfaction of feelings for Julia and Connor. Connor finds a life for himself courting danger on a daily basis. Connections, however, of people who love each other as these three do find ways to hang on. Once again, Evans has taken the vast scenery of places, in this case Montana and Africa, and enfolded those places into the heart of the story. He is simply a master at using setting as an additional character. Now that I've finished my last Nicholas Evans novel, I can only hope that others will follow. Each one thus far has been an experience in pure reading pleasure.
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I LOVED this book! I would've given it 4.5 stars if possible, and didn't feel it deserved 5 stars, so I rounded down to 4. That being said...one of my favorites! I stayed up till early hours of the morning reading this book because I was so captured by everything about it. The lifestyle, the love, the tragedy, the suspense...EVERYTHING! I saw someone else who reviewed this book say that it made them want to visit Montana and I am going to second that! In fact, can I move to Montana instead of visit? Just the vision of men in cowboy hats, blue jeans, boots, and semi-dirty from a hard day's work out in the forest...so enticing! I was able to vision every scenes with such detail it was incredible! The poem Ed left for Julia made me ball like a little girl. Anyways, I was very sad when I finished this book at like 1:30am today. And I would love, love, love to see it made into a movie; however, I don't think that'll happen since it's been out for a while.
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I never really became engrossed in this, or really cared about the characters as much as I hoped I would. I ended up skimming paragraphs and had to make myself finish. Maybe I should have just quit when I lost interest and tried it again another time. Regardless it was entertaining and a quick read. My first book by this author. My husband enjoyed one of his books and so I had high hopes for a great story. I was dissappointed that it seemed so unlike what I had envisioned. I loved The Horse Whisperer and thought the author of the book that inspired it would be more in tune with emotional drama. Again, since a lot of folks have enjoyed this author, I'm sure it was me and not the book.....too many books waiting to be read that I am anxious to get to, so maybe i was a little less forgiving of this one.
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This book has everything I love in a story: slightly dangerous occupations (my writing regularly features EMS and military characters). War and chaos. A handsome, brooding male character. A love triangle ... and a happy ending (I'm a sucker for those). Evans did a masterful job of using traumatic events and showing how the characters develop because of (or in spite of) them. The 'voice' of each was authentic and even though there were four points of view (telling their stories) I didn't have any moments of confusion like I have in other books. The only weakness: the purpose of the moose-on-fire imagery was unclear to me, other than a vague notion of significance.
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Introduced me to the term Smoke Jumpers ( it's pretty cool look it up ) other than that nothing new here. Same ole ole. Just the rehashing of his previous novels. -
Smoke Jumpers are folks who jump into the middle of forest fires with the means and intentions of putting them out, or at least slowing down their path. Connor Ford and Ed Tully are two such smoke jumpers and are the main characters, along with Julia Bishop, the woman who marries Ed but is loved by both of them.
A long convoluted story which is sometimes interesting and sometimes leaves the reader wondering where the plot is going. In reality the reader knows where the plot is eventually heading but it takes quite awhile to get there! Over 550 pages, and I wondered towards the end when it would ever end.
Received the paperback from a fellow reader and I took it on a vacation because of its length, so I didn't have to take more than one book. -
I like this author's books which combine romance and adventure in thrilling tales. This book tells the story of a man in a dangerous profession and also tells of the romance looking for while he tries to do a hard job.
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Firmly in my top #3 books of all time ♥️
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Nicholas Evans is a first rate story teller who has infused every element available to a writer into the Smoke Jumper and turned a mere spark of an idea into fireworks -- he has an uncanny ability to get inside the very essence of what makes his characters tick and fleshes each one into a real & alive being, real in one's own mind anyway. Combine that with epic proportions that leads the reader from one continent to another and back again, threading it with a cocktail of catch-22 circumstances which are cause for the reader to pause and contemplate impact, summoning uncomfortable questions about how they really feel regarding certain dicey situations, and leading you to wonder how in the hell he's going to tie all these long and winding roads together. Tie them he does and in expert style. The Smoke Jumper is, indeed, about bona fide Smoke Jumpers (of which I didn't even know existed) but it's also about troubled teens and the people who try to help them, music men chasing yet losing their big dreams, the destruction caused by perceived unrequited love and the shattering rain of war; in essence, The Smoke Jumper is about human existence and the relationship that human beings have with one another under a vast array of circumstances. The ability of Nicholas Evans to pull off such a complicated tale so well is uncanny. How he gets inside the head of so many varied personalities and interprets what appears to be very real and plausible outcomes of each interaction is remarkable. Is there a tad bit of fictional magic thrown into the mix? Sure. But afterall, isn't that the beauty and liberty of fiction and to be expected to some degree? Is there a little bit of mooshie romance added for good measure. Yep - a little, but it's not overbearing and the allure of the book's basic premise far overshadows the lovey dovey factor. All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed the Smoke Jumper. It was a great read by a wonderful & talented writer.
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Sometimes when you pick up a book you have an idea of where the story is going. I at least had an idea of where this one was going, but had no idea the struggles that would occur in the story to get there, nor did I have the story completely resolved.
I was first introduced to Nicholas Evans in a book store on a summer vacation. We were in one of those books a million and the cover kept grabbing at me. Till at last I resolved myself to purchase The Horse Whisper. What an astounding book and author. I've read The Loop also. I purchased The Smoke Jumper ages ago and just never got around to reading it. I wasn't disappointed either.
This story of love and courage for all parties involved is very deep. Life is always a struggle and sometimes we learn right away life's experience and sometimes we have to keep making the same mistakes over and over (always in different forms) until we "get it". The journey for Julia, Ed, and Connor is a long one. Life lessons are many. The story has enough "reality" spin on it that you can't help thinking it could be true. -
I thought at first I wasn't going to like this book. A character in Chapter One doesn't reappear until Chapter 4, but she is a key figure in the plot. There's enough tension, romance, heartache, adventure, history and edge of your seat suspense to keep you reading.
Evans is a wonderful writer with a fantastic way with words. Some sentences and passages just take my breath away. Be forewarned though that this is not a light romance novel. There are some tough scenes and thought provoking ideas posed. But it is worth it, and it's good to exercise your brain and heart at the same time.
What surprised me was that Evans is from and still lives in England, but has no problem describing Idaho and the U.S. He actually has no problem in his awareness of the world.
Great book, and I gave it 5 stars in the end. -
Near the end of the book, I had the feeling that the rest of the book was somewhere beside me.....but when I looked, it wasn't really there. Truly, I checked to be certain that I had not inadvertently purchased an abridgement. Yes, the story fragments that are told show Evans at his best. Yes, the story is gripping. In fact, it is indeed because it is gripping that the fairytale ending is a bit of a letdown. What is the meaning of the burning elk's antlers and eyes? Where does Skye twist fate? When and how did Ed die? Why all the unwoven threads? A beautiful story unfulfilled. Still.....worth five stars. The parts of the story that exist are very well written.
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In Nicholas Evans's The Smoke Jumper, he wrote such an emotional and heart-warming eco-thriller than ever before. For Connor Ford, he was a smoke jumper who saved Julia Bishop's life. He fell in love with her, when she was with fellow smoke jumper, Ed Tully, his best friend. That have created an awkward love triangle, since she loved both of them, until she had to choose between the two of them after a fiery tragedy happened in Montana. After the fire, he chose a life that didn't bring him happiness, until he was reunited with Julia with a new chance to be with her in the end.
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I read this book when it was first published and I've just finished reading it again. It's a great book!
The story of two men, best friends from completely different backgrounds with opposite personalities who are Smoke Jumpers. The story begins in Montana and the introduction of a young woman. This is where the story of true friendship and honor really begin and the story enfolds you. You feel as though you know these people and the travels take you around the world to the most horrific and beautiful moments one can experience.
Love, love, love this book. Would recommend to all! -
Loved it. Quoting a paragraph here that really moved me.
They (abused kids) didn't sob or wail or sniff, the way ordinary kids cried, kids who had parents who would hear it and immediately come and put their arms around them and comfort them and make the pain go away. Abused kids cried silently. Because if you didn't, all you got was another beating. So you learned to cry in private, in the dark, at the dead of night, when nobody could see or hear you. And you kept absolutely still, just let the tears empty out of you in a stream of silent sorrow.
