Both Sides of the Fire Line: Memoir of a Transgender Firefighter

by Bobbie Scopa

Overview

Bobbie Scopa spent close to five decades working through nearly every challenge a firefighter can face.

Scopa was a strike team leader for the Dude Fire in 1990, where six firefighters were tragically killed, and she served at Ground Zero immediately after 9/11. She’s worked mountain rescues, city fires, mega-wildfires, and everything in between.

While battling conditions and harsh flames on the outside, she also found herself waging a tougher battle on the inside. Scopa was torn between how to maintain the façade everyone expected of her and whether to live as her true self. “A hero firefighter can’t possibly be transgender, right?” she thought.

Both Sides of the Fire Line is Bobbie Scopa’s uplifting memoir of bravely facing the heat of fierce challenges, professionally and personally.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781641608060
Publisher:	Chicago Review Press, Incorporated
Publication date:	09/06/2022
Pages:	272
Sales rank:	642,703
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Bobbie Scopa is a retired firefighter, author, podcast host, and public speaker. She has forty-five years of firefighting experience and has received numerous professional awards and industry recognition, including Firefighter of the Year (1990) from the Professional Firefighters of Arizona; Governor’s Award, State of Arizona (1990); Certificate of Appreciation from the City of New York for work performed at the World Trade Center in 2001; and the Unit Citation Award for efficacy in the U.S. Forest Service (2014). She was a featured speaker at the U.S. Forest Service’s “Pride Outside” diversity, equity, and inclusion event in June 2021. She is also the host of the podcast BobbieOnFire.com. Scopa divides her time between Puget Sound, Washington, and Scottsdale, Arizona.

Table of Contents

Part I: A Life Lost
1. The Dude
2. Hiding in Plain Sight
3. The Science Experiment
4. Killing Birds
5. Driving Blind
6. Holding on for Dear Life
7. The Unraveling
Part II: A Life Found
8. The Dance
9. The Search for Calm Water
10. The Spirit Leads
11. Finding Solid Ground
12. Looking for Love
13. Looking Ahead

 

Editorial Reviews

"In this compelling new book, Bobbie Scopa shares her life as a man, a woman, and a firefighter. Each chapter of her life, and of this book, can help us to better understand what it means to be transgender. As she mentions, the only experience that many people have of the transgender experience comes through the media. Her memoir reminds us that transgender people, while facing unique challenges in their lives, have the same goals as all human beings do: to discover who they are, to find love as best they can, and to serve their community with compassion and grace." —James Martin, SJ, author of Building a Bridge

"I tore through Bobbie Scopa's fascinating and moving memoir. It's honest, direct, brisk, funny, and above all, human." —Alex Blumberg, host of the podcast How to Save a Planet

"Firefighters, and wildland firefighters in particular, are a special group, and many will see themselves in this book. Bobbie's rise in the fire service, both structural and wildland, was not without hardship and challenges, and she tells her unique and compelling story with humor, introspection, and grace, holding very little back.  She embodies the wildland fire leadership principles of duty, respect, and integrity." —Riva Duncan, retired US Forest Service Fire Chief

"A deeply personal account of a unique life and the bravery it takes to be the person one is meant to be." —Library Journal

"Filled with humour, grace and honesty, Both Sides of the Fire Line is an intimate view into someone who’s devoted their life to saving others."—International Fire Fighter Magazine

From the Publisher

07/01/2022

Designated male at birth, Scopa, as a child, knew her gender identity did not align. In a traditional and religious family in the 1960s, however, pushing back seemed impossible. Desperate to maintain the role that was expected of her, Scopa began working summers as a firefighter in hopes that the tough, dangerous work would bolster her masculine facade. While those summer jobs became a full-time profession that she loved, and the adrenaline-fueled life helped distract from her internal conflict for a time, eventually Scopa reached a crisis point where she needed to live as her true self or collapse entirely. Open and straightforward, Scopa's memoir comingles her work as a firefighter, who battled deadly wildfires and the aftermath of 9/11, with the more intimate narrative of her mental and emotional struggles with gender dysphoria and the effects—both positive and negative—of transitioning on her personal and professional life. VERDICT A deeply personal account of a unique life and the bravery it takes to be the person one is meant to be.—Kathleen McCallister

Library Journal