Chaucer’s Books will host John Vaillant, bestselling author of “The Tiger,” for an in-store book signing of his new book “Fire Weather,” 6 p.m. Tuesday, June 13 at 3321 State St.

“Fire Weather” presents an account of a colossal wildfire and a panoramic exploration of the rapidly changing relationship between fire and humankind.

In May 2016, Fort McMurray, the hub of Canada’s oil industry and America’s biggest foreign supplier, was overrun by wildfire. The multi-billion-dollar disaster melted vehicles, turned entire neighborhoods into firebombs, and drove 88,000 people from their homes in a single afternoon.

Through the lens of the apocalyptic conflagration — the wildfire equivalent of Hurricane Katrina — Vaillant warns this was not a unique event, but a preview of what we must prepare for in a hotter, more flammable world.

Fire has been a partner in human evolution for hundreds of millennia, shaping culture and civilization, yet this volatile energy source has always threatened to elude human control, and in a new age of intensifying climate change, its destructive power is being unleashed in previously unimaginable ways.

“Fire Weather” takes readers on a journey through the intertwined histories of North America’s oil industry and the birth of climate science, to the unprecedented devastation wrought by modern forest fires, and into lives forever changed by these disasters.

Vaillant’s award-winning nonfiction books “The Golden Spruce” and “The Tiger” were national best sellers. His debut novel “The Jaguar’s Children” was a finalist for the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and the International Dublin Literary Award.

Vaillant has received the Governor General’s Literary Award, British Columbia’s National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction, the Windham-Campbell Literature Prize, and the Pearson Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction. He lives in Vancouver.