The Morning After the Fire

On November 8, 2018, the Camp Fire swept through Paradise, California, reducing nearly fourteen thousand homes to ash in a single day. Among them was the small house belonging to retired schoolteacher Martha Oliver, who fled with nothing but her dog and a photo album. For months, she lived in a FEMA trailer, grieving everything she had lost — her garden, her late husband's workshop, the kitchen where she had fed decades of neighborhood children.…