The Evolution of Fire

Longlisted in the 2026 National Book Awards

A Katie Couric Media Summer Reading Selection

"The Evolution of Fire is stunningly written—vivid in imagery, in the braiding together of language, and in the honoring of every person it shines a light on."—Hanif Abdurraqib, author of There's Always This Year

From the celebrated author of Limber, a luminous collection of essays about crisis, hope, and the decision to resist or embrace evolution—a book about time, for our time.

Crisis is an agent of evolution, and Angela Pelster knows what it means to evolve. As a child, she burned grass to keep weeds at bay and watched tadpoles transform. She basked in the warmth of her father’s love but was burned by his rage, and she witnessed a sudden, unnamable change occur in her older sister after an encounter with a stranger in a white van. In adulthood, she survived the explosion of her marriage, the destruction of her burning home, and a year spent as the single mother of a toddler without a home of their own. And like us all, she has weathered the upheaval of our current atmosphere—political instability, climate change, mass extinction.

But in spite of the world’s violence, Pelster manages to remain open to its beauty, deciding not to resist change, but to give herself over to it and let evolution make her into a new animal. She plumbs the depths of ancestral knowledge to uncover the scale of our ancient capacity for adaptation, from humankind’s early harnessing of fire to the grandmothers responsible for our continued existence.

Meditative and curious, pulsing with fascination, fear, and the untamable human spirit, The Evolution of Fire contemplates who we are now and what we still might become.