A CATALOG OF BURNT OBJECTS, by Shana Youngdahl, Dial Books, March 18, 2025, Hardcover, $19.99 (young adult)
A girl struggles to figure out her estranged brother, a new love, and her own life just as wildfires beset her small California town in A Catalog of Burnt Objects, by Shana Youngdahl.
Seventeen-year-old Caprice wants to piece her family back together now that her older brother has returned home, even as she resents that he ever broke them apart. Just as she starts to get a new footing—falling in love for the first time, uncertainly mending her traumatized relationship with her brother, completing the app that will win her a college scholarship and a job in tech—wildfires strike Sierra, her small California town, forcing her to reckon with a future that is impossible to predict.
A love story of many kinds, and a reflection of the terrifying, heartbreaking Camp Fire that destroyed Paradise, California, where the author grew up, this is a tale that looks at what is lost and discovers what remains, and how a family can be nearly destroyed again and again, and still survive. —Synopsis provided by Dial Books
A Paradise, Calif. native, author Shana Youngdahl was inspired to write A Catalog of Burnt Things after many friends and loved ones lost almost everything in the 2018 Camp Fire. A Catalog of Burnt Objects not only looks at climate change, but does so through the direct impact it has on family, friends and community.
At the center of the story is Caprice, a girl with big dreams of college and success as a coder. Everything gets upended, though, when her brother comes home from rehab and a new boy who has the potential to become more than a friend moves to town.
When the fire charges through the town, it helps bring the most important things into focus. Youngdahl’s exploration of trauma is to be commended. Caprice is not only dealing with her brother’s illness, but the aftermath of the fire and loss of a loved one. There’s a lot to unpack, and Youngdahl does so with a careful touch.
The book isn’t just about Caprice, though. It’s about an entire community, and Youngdahl includes that community in a catalog of sorts. A Catalog of Burnt Objects refers to brief “essays” (for the lack of a better word) sprinkled throughout the novel that focus on important things people lost in the fire. They are brief and delivered from a first-person point of view.
A Catalog of Burnt Objects is a thoughtful look at the resilience of the human spirit.
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