Praise for The Fire Outside My Window

"Sandra Millers Younger's book should be required reading for those who live where homes and wild lands -- and wild fire -- meet. Younger has done a splendid, literate job of reporting her own near-death experience with Southern California's catastrophic Cedar Fire and expanding the account into a broader tale of what it's like for everyone from firefighters to homeowners to experience one of these howling monsters, which destroy dreams, landscapes, and sometimes lives."  
John N. MacLean, author of The Esperanza Fire, 
Fire on the Mountain, Fire and Ashes, and The Thirtymile Fire
"Sandra Millers Younger was among the thousands in San Diego County who lost their homes to the catastrophic Cedar fire in 2003. Even though a decade has passed, she captures the terror and loss with vivid strokes in The Fire Outside My Window, a book that’s equal parts memoir and nonfiction narrative. It’s a tricky line to walk between participant and reporter, but she does it well. . . . A signal fire by a lost hunter is what touched off the conflagration. Younger goes as a reporter to see him answer for his mistake in court. She also goes as one of his victims (although she disdains that word) and has to decide whether to forgive him. Powerful stuff."
                                                           
​                                                        John Wilkens, San Diego Union Tribune
"Ms. Younger's depiction of her family's harrowing escape from a catastrophic fire will have you sitting on the edge of your seat from start to finish. Her personal story of survival is masterfully interwoven with that of a larger tapestry of tales - of families torn apart by death and injury, of valiant firefighters, even that of the lost hunter who ignited the tragic blaze. Younger's memoir gains special relevance in this era of epic wildfires, not just in California but the rest of the country. This book should be required reading for those who live in harm's way, for firefighters and for anyone who enjoys a well-told, suspenseful story." 
 Marivi Soliven Blanco, author of The Mango Bride,
Suddenly Stateside, and Spooky Mo
"I didn’t review Sandra’s book because we are close friends. In fact, we both enrolled in Judy Reeves’s writing group around the same time in 2009. (In 2013, two members of that group, Marivi Soliven and Sandra Millers Younger, got their books published.) The Fire Outside My Window is a comprehensive, exhaustively researched account of the Cedar Fire, [one of] the largest wildfire[s] in California history. It also burned down Sandra’s home. While Sandra was editing her manuscript, the group urged her to put more of her story in the book, but she felt like she had to make sure she got everyone else’s story right before she could expand on her own. She got the story right."
Jim Ruland, author of Forest of Fortune and Big Lonesome
"Sandra Millers Younger is a gifted storyteller and a first-class journalist. Even if you prefer fiction over nonfiction, you’ll be riveted by The Fire Outside My Window, her powerful story of the 2003 Cedar Fire, [one of] the largest wildfire[s] in California history."

                                                        Drusilla Campbell, author of 17 novels,
                        including Blood Orange, The Good Sister and In Doubt