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

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.