Fernanda Santos is the author of "The Fire Line: The Story of the Granite Mountain Hotshots," winner of the Western Writers of America 2017 Spur Award for Best First Book Nonfiction. The book tells the story of the unbreakable bond among nineteen Granite Mountain Hotshots, a band of firefighters killed on June 30, 2013 while battling a wildfire in Arizona. 
Fernanda has reported in three languages, in Latin America and across the United States. As a New York Times correspondent in the American Southwest, she once hiked across the desert to write about the migrants who have died while trying to make it from Mexico to the United States and helicoptered down into the bottom of the Grand Canyon to meet the man whose job is to keep the lights on at Grand Canyon National Park. She got her start in journalism in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, her home country, where she bore witness to violence, inequality and immeasurable hope. In those scenes, she found her passion for telling true stories.