The book gives a firsthand, minute-by-minute account of the Yarnell Hill Fire tragedy as it unfolded. McDonough credits the hotshot crew with teaching him how to be a man and a father, and he shares his story of redemption in his memoir My Lost Brothers (re-titled Granite Mountain). I couldn't even get a job at McDonald's flipping burgers. I felt like a failure because I couldn't support my daughter, because no one wanted to hire a felon. I probably would have continued doing drugs, I probably would have ended up in prison or with an overdose - or dead. 'The hotshot crew was the best thing that ever happened to me,' says the real Brendan McDonough. All of that is in line with the true story. He has a child on the way with his girlfriend and is looking to turn his life around.

In the Only the Brave movie, Miles Teller's character, Brendan McDonough, is a former heroin junkie with a burglary conviction for stealing a GPS. These controlled burns create a control line that the advancing fire cannot cross.īefore joining the Granite Mountain Hotshots, had Brendan McDonough really been a druggie petty criminal with a child on the way? A hotshot contains an inferno buy using fire to burn a line through the fire's fuel path. Normal municipal firefighters put out fires with water, which often includes things like building fires and house fires. A 'hotshot' is a firefighter who fights fires with fire instead of water.

Only the brave true story