California Author explores her family’s tumultuous experience surviving, suffering, and regrouping after Camp Fire

Snow After Fire cover

Author Kandi Maxwell

The personal story publisher.

California Author explores her family’s tumultuous experience surviving, suffering, and regrouping after Paradise, California's devastating 2018 Camp Fire.

CAMANCHE, IOWA, UNITED STATES, June 12, 2023/EINPresswire.com/ -- Legacy Books Press LLC has released its latest memoir, Snow After Fire by Kandi Maxwell. The Paradise Camp Fire in November of 2018 brought horrendous loss and ruin—around 30,000 people lost their homes and 153,335 acres were burned by the wildfire. Eighty-six people died. The fire not only hurt the individuals who had lost their homes, it also created upheaval for many families who took on the burden of caring for their loved ones. The fire caused displacement of Kandi’s two grown sons and her granddaughters. When her sons discovered their home was demolished, they came to stay with Kandi and her husband. Since her granddaughters and their mother had lost their home, too, and there was no longer a school, her granddaughters stayed in Kandi’s home a few days a week to relieve the stress of living in crowded motel rooms. The busy days had taken a toll on her health—energy waned. She felt conflicted. How much of herself could she give up for her family? And there was this—how would she survive the continued loss of her refuge, the forest lands she called home?

Maxwell talks about how her book developed and took shape. "I’m always writing and have had strong success in finding publishers for my flash and long-form nonfiction stories. I didn’t intend to write a book, but as the vignettes I wrote during the years of struggle during and after the Paradise Camp Fire kept coming, I realized I had written enough to form a book. I went back to my short stories and began to join them together—adding smoother transitions for better clarity and revisions to strengthen the themes.”

For her hopes with the release of this book, Maxwell wants readers to see that, within their own difficult experiences, there is always a light, a bit of hope. “I love imagery, and I delve deeply into the magic of nature—the sweet scent of pine, the beauty in the first blossoms of spring, the sounds of songbirds and coyote howls. It’s within the sounds, smells, and sights of nature where I can relax, rejuvenate, and heal from hardships. I hope others might find this form of healing as well. I also want to remind people of the devastating effects climate change has had on this healing resource, and why the protection of our wild lands needs to be a priority.”

Kandi is a creative nonfiction writer who lives in the Sierra Foothills of Northern California. She has been an English teacher, a backcountry and rock-climbing guide, a musician, a recreation therapist, and a client to several psychotherapists. She is a wife, a mother, and a grandmother. Her stories have been published in Hippocampus Magazine, KYSO Flash, The Door is Ajar, Raven’s Perch, The Offbeat, Wordrunner eChapbooks and in many other literary journals and print anthologies.

Learn more on Legacy Book Press website here and buy now on Amazon.

Jodie Toohey
Legacy Book Press LLC
563-343-0550
email us here

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