On June 11, 1979 the US Forest Service endured its deadliest aviation disaster when a DC-3 with 12 people aboard crashed deep in the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness of Idaho. Photographs taken by a backpacker caught one of the plane's engines falling off midair before it plummeted into the whitewater of the Selway River. His photo made national news of the crash. The riveting narrative is not a single story: it consists of stories within stories, detailing the events before and after the flight through the eyes of two survivors, and the heroism of rescue pilots, smokejumpers, boatmen, divers, and government employees, as well as the investigators and the victims' families.