From Mount St. Helens to Fire Mountain: A Conversation with Dana Mentink

This week on the LiteraryScape Friday Book Club, host Melissa LaShure welcomed author Dana Mentink to discuss her thrilling new suspense novel, Fire Mountain. In this captivating conversation, Dana shared the inspiration behind her unique setting, her fascinating protagonist, and what readers can expect from this high-stakes survival story. A Volcano, A Trucker, and A Baby: The Perfect Storm Dana Mentink’s latest novel, Fire Mountain, combines several compelling elements that immediately grab your attention. The story follows a female long-distance trucker who finds herself trapped in a volcanic eruption zone after a mysterious accident. But the real twist? She wakes up to discover a baby in her truck—a baby that isn’t hers. “I follow a number of female independent truckers on social media,” Dana explained during the podcast. “It’s just really fascinating to me how they have carved out a niche for themselves in a primarily male-dominated business and just made it their own.” This admiration for the profession led her to create a protagonist whose career choice is as intriguing as her predicament. Inspired by Mount St. Helens The volcanic setting isn’t arbitrary—it stems from Dana’s personal experience witnessing one of America’s most significant natural disasters. “I was 12 when Mount St. Helens erupted in 1980,” she shared. “That was really unprecedented… just watching that unfold in the news and just looking at how it started out as almost an entertaining thing. And then it turned into just a catastrophe in May. So that just made a deep impression on me.” This childhood memory evolved into a fascinating “what if” scenario: What would it be like to be trapped in an eruption zone where “you cannot predict the behavior of the earth under your feet”? The result is a suspense novel set in the fictional Mount Ember in Skamania County, Washington—real adjacent, as Dana puts it. Meet Cullen Landry: The Hero with a Secret Fear The male protagonist, Cullen Landry, is a retired SWAT cop who should have evacuated but stayed behind to help friends secure their properties. When he witnesses the trucker’s accident, his instinct to help draws him into an extraordinary survival situation. What makes Cullen particularly endearing is his vulnerability. Despite his tough exterior and professional background, he harbors an amusing fear of a certain type of rodent that the characters encounter during their ordeal. “He wants to be manly, but he’s really, he doesn’t like this rodent,” Dana laughed. “He doesn’t come off well in that scene.” The Ultimate Challenge: Surviving with a Baby Perhaps the most ingenious aspect of Fire Mountain is the inclusion of the mysterious baby. Dana explained her thought process: “I was thinking about if you’re alone in the wilderness and you have no help and no technology and you have no shelter, what would be the most difficult thing? And I think it would be if you were responsible for another life and particularly a very fragile life like a baby and particularly if you have zero maternal skills.” This scenario creates the perfect storm of obstacles for character development—exactly what every compelling story needs. From Classroom to Full-Time Writing Dana’s journey to full-time writing is inspiring. After years of balancing elementary school teaching with part-time writing, she made the leap to full-time authorship five years ago. Her experience...