Book note: Trimotor and Trail, by Earl Cooley

From the inside jacket copy of Trimotor and Trail, by Earl Cooley, Mountain Press Publishing Company, Missoula, Montana, 1984 (ellipsis in original):

In Trimotor and Trail Earl Cooley tells of times, places and events lost to history. Like that of the free trapper, the buffalo hunter, and the plains cowboy before him, the world Earl Cooley knew as a young man was quickly plowed and paved behind him. Future generations will know it only from journals like this one.

-Driven from a homestead in eastern Montana by drought, grasshoppers, and bank failure in the aftermath of World War I. ...

-The backbreaking struggle to survive the Great Depression as a farmhand in the Bitterroot Valley of Western Montana. ...

-Working through forestry school as a lookout, smokechaser, and blasting specialist with the U.S. Forest Service. ...

-Volunteering for the first attempts to parachute firefighters to remote forest fires, including the two near fatalities on the first operational jump. ...

-Sustaining the smokejumper project through World War II by recruiting 4Fs and conscientious objectors, and by using cast-off parachutes. ...

-The War Department's secret battle against 10,000 bomb-carrying balloons launched from Japan. ...

-The Mann Gulch disaster in which 13 smokejumpers died after being trapped by an explosive forest fire. ...

-The life of a forest ranger among Idaho's "Salmon River Savages" and in the Cabinet Wilderness of western Montana. ...

-The evolution of Forest Service firefighting tactics and fire management policy. ...

Trimotor and Trail is more than the adventures of Earl Cooley, pioneer smokejumper and forest ranger. It is a chronicle of an America vibrant with frontier vigor and freedom as well as a testament to what men can do when confronted by an extraordinary challenge.

I haven't read the book. I've just flipped through it before putting it out for sale, but it looks interesting. Of course, I have a known weakness for noncelebrity memoirs, and for backcountry tales, and for history other than the shifting-boundaries-battles-and-rulers variety.