Eleven-year-old Raynie lives with her mother, Molly, in Anaheim, California, watching over her rescued desert tortoise, Erma Geddon. Raynie's goal is to save endangered species, particularly reptiles, from environmental threats.

Molly, recently divorced from Raynie's father, owns a bakery but dreams of being a successful visual artist. Granny Tooley, Molly's mother and Raynie's grandmother, lives as a squatter in the forest of the Southern Oregon coast range, running from childhood demons and determined to stay “off the grid.”

Raynie’s visits to Tooley’s forest during spring breaks are the perfect time to burn last year’s trash in bonfires and the perfect time to regale Raynie with stories about her ancestors, the caregivers of the earth. An important part of the bonfire experience is Granny Tooley’s threadbare “burning jacket,” a heavy, felted monstrosity the color of urine, spotted with black rimmed-craters where wayward sparks from past fires burned through the dense wool. The jacket smells like sour milk and lanolin. Washing the jacket is not allowed. Neither Raynie nor Molly are aware that Tooley's secret is hidden in the hem of that mangy burning jacket.

After loggers clear-cut the forest, Tooley becomes a nomad, living in her old truck, Dorothy Ann, with her two dogs. The three protagonists, Raynie, Molly, and Granny Tooley, struggle with personal challenges against a backdrop of rapidly growing environmental and political concerns. Touched by dreams and death, the three prevail and grow, as each stumbles through chaos toward a cadence that synchronizes with her own heart.

“The Burning Jacket” is Nel Rand’s second novel. Her first, “Mississippi FlyWay,” was a finalist for the 2007 Foreword Magazine Book of the Year Award. She is working on a collection of short stories and a mystery that goes back to her southern roots.

Raynie: February 2000.

Erma Geddon woke up today, a month too early. She’s a California Desert Tortoise, and my best friend. We have four major things in common.

1. We are both girls.
2. Today is our birthdays. It’s Valentine’s Day. We don’t know the real day or year of Erma’s birth so I share my big day with her. She was rescued out on a highway near Palm Springs and the turtle rescue people decided that she’s around fifty years old. I was born in Anaheim Memorial Hospital just after midnight on February 14, 1989.
3. Erma is on the endangered species list. And so is my sorry eleven-year-old ass.
4. We both have scientific names. Her name is Gopherus agassizii, mine is Homo stupid.

I memorized Erma’s official moniker when I was five and a half. My dad, Ray (I prefer to call him Ray, now that he’s gone), used to quiz me in front of company to show off how smart I was. He would lift me onto a table and I would stand Indian tall, like my Granny Tooley, and recite, “Class: Reptilia, Order: Chelonia, Suborder: Cryptodira. Super Family: Testudinoidea, Family: Testudinidae, Genus: Gopherus, Species: agassizii.”

From Granny Tooley I learned the importance of naming things, like the animals and plants that live on the earth, birds that fly in the sky, learning the names of one’s ancestors, or hard ones like naming a wrong that needs righted. I use Erma’s genus and species now that I’m older, and have nothing to prove. I love the way it sounds, Gopherus agassizii.

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