"When a fire engulfs an Oregon forest, a group of trapped hikers must find another way out"--

Thirteen-year-old Sam Castine is at summer camp while his mother is in rehab, but when the camp is evacuated ahead of a fast moving wildfire, he makes the mistake of going back for his phone, and finds himself left behind, disoriented, and running for his life, together with a girl, Delphy, from a different camp--finding an old jeep keeps them going, but in the wilds of Maine, there are only logging roads and the deadly crown fire is everywhere.

Eleven-year-old Virgil Pepper is returning to Little Lost Lake in Oregon with his older brother and sister to scatter their mother's ashes in the place she loved best, but when their van breaks down in the middle nowhere, it is up to Virgil, who shared his mother's love of science and the wild, to remember and use all the lessons she taught him to survive a forest fire started by a lightning strike.

As a boy adjusts to his family's new home in the forest, he learns to observe and appreciate the forest animals, especially a fox with whom he strikes up a friendship--until a wildfire forces both of them to flee for their lives. Includes a note about forest fires and their role in forest ecology.