Entertainment
How California's worst fire season — so far — became a writer's most powerful metaphor
On the Shelf
The Last Fire Season
By Manjula Martin
Pantheon: 352 pages, $29
If you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a commission from Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookstores.
By common measures, Manjula Martin is not a hopeful person. “In the current discussion of climate change,” she said, “‘hope’ is often used as a shorthand for returning to normal, otherwise known as business as usual.”
The sentiment pervades the writer’s new memoir, “The Last Fire Season,” but it prompts an important question, which I brought up during a video chat with Martin in late December: Why would people who feel hopeless about climate change still be motivated to do anything about it?
“I don’t actually believe there’s no hope for continued human existence, but if that’s true, then it’s even more important that we take care of each other and respect the land,” Martin says. A former editor of Zoetrope magazine, she co-wrote the 2019 horticultural guide “Fruit Trees for Every Garden” — hardly the product of a fatalist. She turns the question around: “That process of learning to give and take real care is actually the best chance we have of constructing real hope.”
But then she adds, “If mutual care isn’t working for you either, maybe try anger?”
This interplay of care and anger is partly what makes “The Last Fire Season” riveting. It is both a chronicle and a handbook of the struggle to fight the distortion of grief into despair.
The fire season of the title took place in 2020, a year of catastrophes for Martin, California and the world. COVID-19 filled hospitals and morgues and led to widespread isolation, U.S. democracy was challenged as never before and 58,258 forest fires nationwide burned more than 10 million acres, including 4.3 million in California. Martin, who grew up in Santa Cruz, lives two hours north of San Francisco in a heavily forested part of Sonoma County.
One night that August, she and her partner witnessed a furious storm. “The blades of electricity bisected the air,” Martin writes in the book. “My insides were set abuzz. My lungs contracted like they’d just hit cold water; my jaw compacted into itself; every muscle in my pelvis … felt as though it had been turned to wood. Somewhere inside my brain every synapse fired, and I was thrust into a whorl of anxiety: go, go, go.”
“The response to disaster can’t be to do the exact same thing all over again,” says Manjula Martin, author of the new memoir “The Last Fire Season.”
(Manjula Martin)
They decided to evacuate a few days later, as the rapidly developing Lightning complex fire was drawing near. The coastal redwoods that towered over her house had never seemed so vulnerable — and neither had she.
Packed in her “go bag” was an ample supply of pain medication. A dislodged IUD had led to a hysterectomy and other surgeries, leaving Martin with chronic, debilitating pain. She was learning to live in a changing, damaged body, just as the forest over her head was adapting its own series of catastrophes. As a writer, she loves embracing that metaphor, along with its contradictions.
“I think the ghost of Susan Sontag is always looking over my shoulder when I talk about my health crisis and compare it to the wildfire crisis,” she says with a laugh, in reference to Sontag’s famous excoriation of “Illness as Metaphor.” But the parallels resonated in her life.
“In a practical way, an everyday life kind of way, I found that I had skills that I didn’t know I had because of my health crisis,” she adds. “Those skills included understanding that things are never gonna be the same. And that sucks. But it also opens up all these interesting, weird … nonconventional ways of thinking and interacting with each other and with the land.”
Like the scorched forests around her home, she had also been harmed by companies “who are OK with a certain margin of error in their product.” At the same time, “accidents are accidents. They’re not always someone’s fault. But that was really the key to connecting my personal experience of harm with these larger systems that are very intricately linked to climate change.”
What opened her up to the parallels, Martin says, was gardening. “Once I started gardening as I was recovering from my surgeries — there’s that very cliché thing of putting your hands in dirt — but that cliché comes from truth. It wasn’t that feeling of life cycles and generation and renewal necessarily. It was the pleasure.” It was also the stark, clarifying push-and-pull with nature: “You do things that are harmful, like cutting things, and the plants push back, and then you have to wait a year to find out what’s gonna happen.”
Waiting for a body or a forest to heal involves an analogous kind of patience. But if Martin had simply dropped her metaphor and left it at that, her memoir would be much shorter and less interesting. Instead, the author is quick to acknowledge the flaws and contradictions in such comparisons. Gardening, for one, is a privilege, and she is well aware of the ways economics, race and historical forces have influenced her relationship with nature.
The stewardship of the land by California’s Indigenous people included “good fire,” the types of prescribed burns increasingly recognized as a key to preventing massive firestorms. In recent years, many tribal fire experts have been asked to fix the forests.
But Martin says the approach needs to be cooperative and collaborative. Her book quotes Margo Robbins, a Yurok fire expert: “Native people can’t do it on their own … we don’t own that much of the land, for one thing.”
“I think it’s especially the responsibility of those who have carried out these harmful actions to make reparations,” Martin tells me, “both to the land and its original inhabitants. And it’s the responsibility of all who benefit from these harms to ensure that happens. I include myself in that group, as a white property owner who is a direct beneficiary of the colonization of the land where I live.”
This is one reason that, despite the fact that 2020 was definitely not the last fire season, Martin and her partner are staying put. “What you have to do is learn to adjust and live in the new normal as it will be,” she says.
Just don’t attach a hashtag to her actions: “In some neighborhoods, you’ll see a lot of signs that say ‘Thank you, firefighters.’ I don’t fault those emotions. They’re very real. But it’s what I call ‘hashtag hope.’ The response to disaster [can’t] be to do the exact same thing all over again.”
Martin understands that terms like “new normal” might feel like defeat — as toothless in its way as the dreaded word hope. In the book, however, she draws inspiration from eco-psychologist Joanna Macy, who argues that despair opens us up possibilities for change. Martin’s body and her environment have taught her a lot about despair, but also about adaptation.
As we finish our chat, Martin asks me to stay on the line while she moves outside. “They’re babies,” she says, gesturing to the hundred-year-old redwoods that tower over her lawn. “I used to wonder why, when it’s windy, trees don’t just instantly fall down, they’re so tall,” she says. “And I realized it’s because they’re alive. The same way a person standing upright doesn’t fall down — they’re alive. They dance.”
Berry writes for a number of publications and tweets @BerryFLW.
Pizza Movie (2026) Director: Nick Kocher and Brian McElhaney, Star: Gaten Matarazzo and Sean Giambrone
Somehow, I got through an hour of this movie. I was seconds away from turning off in the first fifteen minutes because of the juvenile humor. Pizza Movie is too silly, repetitive, and the characters are annoying. Stranger Things Gaten Matarazzo and Sean Giambrone star as college friends, Jack and Montgomery. College angles are rarely seen in films right now, and that’s the one saving grace of the film. Similar to high school, people are also trying to fit in. The story and visuals were too corny. You can only watch someone’s head exploding for so long without letting yours.
The Super Mario Galaxy Movie (2026) Director: Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic, Stars: Chris Pratt, Charlie Day, Anya Taylor-Joy
I never saw the first Super Mario Brothers Movie when it was out, but I heard it got positive reviews. My brother always loved playing Super Mario video games as a kid, and I’d watch him. I tagged along with my friends to see Super Mario Galaxy Movie, and it’s a cute and fun film. I like it when movies explore the video game world. The animation creates unique worlds and characters. The characters are split into their own storylines, and for me, I felt like it worked. It adds more action, especially for kids who are seeing the films.
Emily in Paris Season 5 (2025) Creator: Darren Star, Stars: Lily Collins and Ashley Park
After a bright spot in season 4, I thought season 5 of Emily in Paris would continue its growth in the story and its protagonist, but no, it’s all drained out in the usual Emily (Lily Collins) mishaps. Ashley Park (Mindy) has become too good for this show. Emily and Mindy waste several opportunities because of their love lives. The whole relationship angle is ruining it. I don’t understand why Alfie (Lucien Laviscount) is still in the show. I thought writers learned their lesson, but by the last episode, they’re continuing to bring the past into an apparent season 6.
Sarah’s Oil (2025) Director: Cyrus Nowrasteh, Stars: Naya Desir-Johnson and Zachary Levi
There’s always history lurking right beneath our noses. Sarah’s Oil (2025) tells the true story of Sarah Rector, an Oklahoma-born African American girl who became the first black female millionaire in the U.S. Naya Desir-Johnson is fierce and driven as Sarah. Zachary Levi is also along for the ride as Bert, a man who helps Sarah. Kate (Bridget Regan) was another favorite character as an intelligent woman. Cyrus Nowrasteh was drawn to the subject for its story and its themes. Nowrasteh’s direction is compelling as he unearths a hidden story from history. The film is streaming on Amazon Prime.
Jack Goes Boating (2014) Director and Star: Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Amy Ryan
Jack Goes Boating (2014) didn’t quite work for me, largely because of its slow pace and uneven storytelling. The film stars the late Seymour Hoffman as Jack, who also directed the film. This was Hoffman’s first and only time in the directing chair. Amy Ryan also stars in the film, giving a solid performance. This was also based on a play that Hoffman starred in. Jack wants to participate in a swim championship. That’s hardly what the film is about, tracking other characters’ stories. While the film aims for quiet intimacy, it ultimately drags, making it an underwhelming viewing experience.
You Kill Me (2016), Director: John Dahl, Stars: Ben Kingsley, Tea Leoni, Luke Wilson
Meet You Kill Me (2016), yet another film that I found in the museum of underrated gems. The concept revolves around Frank (Ben Kingsley), a hitman, who is sent to an A.A. meeting to get his mind focused again. A different story happens, where Frank falls in love with Laurel (Tea Leoni). Leoni is one of my favorite actresses. It also stars the funny Luke Wilson. I liked the trio’s dynamics. You Kill Me is a mental health movie. It’s okay to make changes if you’re not happy. I recommended that you keep an eye out for this movie.
Entertainment
Review: Trigger warning? ‘For Want of a Horse’ gives new meaning to the term ‘animal lover’
“For Want of a Horse,” a play by Olivia Dufault receiving its world premiere in an Echo Theater Company production at Atwater Village Theatre, wants to have a rational conversation about a taboo topic that can provoke instant outrage.
The subject is zoophilia, not to be confused with bestiality, though for many of us it will be a distinction without much of a difference.
Calvin (Joey Stromberg), a good-looking, mild-mannered married accountant, has harbored a secret for much of his life. He has a thing for horses. His erotic interest began at an early age, and all his efforts to lead a normal life have left him depressed and contemplating suicide.
His wife, Bonnie (Jenny Soo), is a permissive kindergarten teacher who’s having difficulty restraining a girl in her class who has discovered the joys of masturbation. Worried about her husband, she discovers through his browsing history that he’s once again visiting strange animal sites.
She suggests he keep a horse, explaining that she doesn’t want to end up a widow or divorcée. Calvin is taken aback by her generosity but has come to recognize that his preference is more than a kink. It’s part of his identity — and maybe the only part that makes his life seem worth living.
Joey Stromberg and Jenny Soo in “For Want of a Horse” at the Echo Theater Company.
(Cooper Bates)
A horse named Q-Tip (Griffin Kelly) enters the couple’s lives. A stable is secured, and the mare, who senses that something strange is going on, is indulged with apples and caresses.
Kelly, a statuesque presence in a dress, harness and boots, brings the horse to life with wild, unpredictable movements. The sheer size of the animal poses a threat to humans. One kick, as Q-Tip herself explains in one of her thought-bubble monologues, is capable of penetrating a steel wall. But controlling an animal’s food supply is an effective way of winning over its trust.
Calvin has found support in the online zoophilia community. PJ (Steven Culp), a man whose current inamorata is a bichon frise, is considering moving to a country where zoophilia isn’t illegal. He’s tired of the shame and the secrecy. He’s proud of his attachment to pooch, even if his thing for dogs has cost him contact with his daughter and ex-wife.
Dufault doesn’t shy away from sexual details. For PJ, intimacy depends on peanut butter. Calvin describes the physical signals that reveal Q-Tip’s erotic satisfaction. The play occasionally descends into sitcom humor. (PJ says he’s considering creating a human-dog dating app called Rin Tin Tinder.) But mostly the subdued tone steers clear of sensationalism.
The production, directed by Elana Luo, is scrupulously well-acted by the four-person cast. Stromberg makes Calvin seem not only reasonable but surprisingly sensitive. Soo’s Bonnie sweetly embodies the excesses of a kind of progressive piety. As PJ, Culp gruffly embraces his role as the play’s polemical fire-starter. And Kelly’s Q-Tip, in the production’s most physically demanding performance, straddles the human-animal divide with theatrical aplomb.
Steven Culp, left, and Joey Stromberg in “For Want of a Horse” at the Echo Theater Company.
(Cooper Bates)
The open-mindedness that Dufault, a trans playwright, brings to the play creates some dramatic slack. Possibly the same fear of making value judgments that has inhibited Bonnie from imposing common-sense discipline in her classroom has robbed “For Want of a Horse” of a propulsive point of view.
The play moves monotonously between Calvin and Bonnie’s bedroom and the stable. Scenic designer Alex Mollo has worked out an efficient way of shifting between these realms by employing the same set of wooden trunks. But the argument of the play doesn’t so much build as elapse.
Time takes its toll, and Calvin eventually has to make a decision. But the character who interested me most was Bonnie, whose reality is only glimpsed. The play tacitly uses her husband’s threat of suicide as a trump card. Zoophilia isn’t merely a fetish for Calvin but a nonnegotiable part of his identity.
This questionable assumption can be psychologically scrutinized not only from Calvin’s point of view but also from his wife’s. The play wants to have an intelligent debate, but it doesn’t want to interrogate certain political positions too skeptically.
At one point, Bonnie objects when Calvin compares his situation to that of homosexuality, but the conversation ends there. The reality is that the right wing has been making a similar claim, arguing that same-sex marriage opens the door to bestiality, polygamy and incest. “For Want of a Horse” inadvertently lends legitimacy to this line of reasoning.
Griffin Kelly in “For Want of a Horse” at the Echo Theater Company.
(Cooper Bates)
Not that extremist positions should be off limits, but they ought to be more rigorously addressed. Similarly, Bonnie’s concern about the issue of consent — how can a horse say yes to intercourse with a human — is introduced only to be dismissed in a shrug of mild-mannered bothsidesism.
While watching “For Want of a Horse,” I recalled a program on PBS called “My Wild Affair” that wasn’t about zoophilia but about the problematic nature of human bonds with untamed animals. Relationships with a seal, an elephant and a rhino, for example — obsessive, protective, loving friendships — all seemed to end if not in outright tragedy, then in shattering heartbreak.
Q-Tip is rightfully given the play’s last word, and Kelly, an actor (HBO’s “The Book of Queer”), writer and comedian, is the production’s driving force. We can never know what’s inside this mare’s mind because Q-Tip’s brain has evolved so differently from our own. Kelly plays the anthropomorphic game while retaining some of the inscrutability of a four-legged creature.
It is through language that we, as humans, traverse the chasm separating us from one another. That’s not possible with animals, even with our closest domestic companions. (Try explaining a necessary medical procedure to a cat.)
“For Want of a Horse” sets out to speak about the unspeakable, but its construction may be too tame for such a wild subject.
‘For Want of a Horse’
Where: Echo Theater Company, Atwater Village Theatre, 3269 Casitas Ave., L.A.
When: 8 p.m. Fridays, Saturdays, Mondays; 4 p.m. Sundays. Ends May 25
Tickets: $15-$42.75
Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes (no intermission)
Info: echotheatercompany.com
Desert Warrior, 2026.
Directed by Rupert Wyatt.
Starring Anthony Mackie, Aiysha Hart, Ben Kingsley, Ghassan Massoud, Sharlto Copley, Sami Bouajila, Lamis Ammar, Géza Röhrig, Numan Acar, Nabil Elouahabi, Hakeem Jomah, Ramsey Faragallah, Saïd Boumazoughe, and Soheil Bostani.
SYNOPSIS:
An honorable and mysterious rogue, known as Hanzala, makes himself an enemy of the Emperor Kisra after he helps a fugitive king and princess in the desert.
With aspirations of being a historical epic harkening back to the sword and sandal blockbusters of yesteryear, Rupert Wyatt’s seventeenth-century Arabia tale is about as generic and epically dull as one would expect from a film plainly titled Desert Warrior. Yes, there appear to be real locations here, and there are some admittedly sweeping shots of various tribes storming into battle on horseback and camels, but it’s all in service of a mess that is both miscast and questionable as the work of a filmmaking team of mostly white creatives.
The story of Emperor Kisraa (Ben Kingsley, a distracting presence even with only one or two scenes) rounding up women from other tribes to be his concubines, which inevitably became the catalyst for a revolution led by Princess Hind (Aiysha Hart), uniting all the divided clans and strategizing battle plans for flanking and poisoning, is undeniably ripe for cinematic treatment. The problem is that what’s here from Rupert Wyatt (and screenwriters Erica Beeney, Gary Ross, and David Self) is less than nothing in the primary creative process; no one seems to have a connection to Arabic heritage or culture, but they have made a flat-out boring film that is often narratively incoherent.
Following the death of her father and escaping the clutches of oppression, the honorable Princess Hind joins forces with a troubled, nameless bandit played by Anthony Mackie (he totally belongs here…), who seems to be here solely to give the movie some star power boost without running the risk of white savior accusations. Whatever the case may be, it’s jarring, but not quite as disorienting as how little screen time he has despite being billed as the lead and how little characterization he has. It is, however, equally disorienting as some of the other names that show up along the way.
As for the other factions, Princess Hind talks to them one by one, giving the film an adventure feel that fails to capitalize on using beautiful scenery in striking or visually poignant ways at almost every turn; the leaders of these tribes also often have no character. There also isn’t much of an understanding of why these tribes are at odds with one another. This movie is filled with dialogue that consistently and shockingly amounts to vague nothingness. Nevertheless, each tribe doesn’t take much convincing to begin with, meaning that not only is the film repetitive, but it’s also lifeless when characters are in conversation.
That Desert Warrior does occasionally spring to life, and a bloated 2+ running time is a small miracle. This is typically accomplished through the occasional fight scene between factions that also serves to demonstrate Princess Hind coming into her own as a warrior. When the tribes are united in a massive-scale battle, and that plan is unfolding step by step, one certainly sees why someone would want to tell this story and pull it off with such spectacle. However, this film is as dry as the desert itself.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★
Robert Kojder
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=embed/playlist
-
Arizona2 minutes agoPilot Jessica Cox to be inducted into Arizona Aviation Hall of Fame
-
Arkansas8 minutes agoEffort to cut former Arkansas corrections secretary’s position as adviser to governor fails – Arkansas Times
-
California14 minutes agoCalifornia sees lowest number of firearm-related deaths since 1968, new data shows
-
Colorado20 minutes agoSouthern Colorado farmers’ market season is here
-
Connecticut26 minutes agoAmtrak won’t close shoreline rail bridges during World Cup, reversing earlier proposal
-
Delaware32 minutes agoLucky Duck a new destination on the Delaware River waterfront
-
Georgia44 minutes ago2026 NFL Draft Scouting Report — Christen Miller, DT, Georgia
-
Hawaii50 minutes ago
Iran War Puts a Pause on Hawaii’s Housing Market Recovery
