The Smoke Inside features the text of interviews with three formerly incarcerated wildland firefighters hand-carved into linoleum and printed with handmade ink made from charcoal gathered in the scars of the 2020 Oregon wildfires. The narrative is overlain with block-graphic linoleum smoke-shapes printed in the same charcoal ink, with highlights in luminous orange Day-Glo inks.

Interviews were conducted as a series of long form conversations between Roger Peet and collaborator Erica Thomas and the three interviewees: Nathan Mosley, Noelle St. John, and Adam Gregg, at the Past Lives community center in Portland Oregon in spring of 2023. Interviews were condensed, edited, laid out and carved by Peet during the fall of 2023.

A prototype of the book was featured in the exhibit “Obscurity: Life Inside the Smoke” curated at the World Forestry Center’s Discovery museum by Peet and Thomas.