Through the U.S. Fire Learning Network (FLN), The Nature Conservancy and federal land management agencies are attempting to reorient fire management from fire suppression toward ecological restoration and community protection. In its first 2 years, the FLN linked place-based collaboratives at a national scale. Using structured planning exercises, the FLN mediated between central coordination and collaborative autonomy by guiding partners through construction of place-based and mutually coherent narratives. These narratives situated landscape partners within an arc of conflict, crisis, and resolution, aligning partners with the goals of FLN's sponsoring organizations while enhancing community solidarity and shared purpose. FLN's narrative framework placed fire managers in a heroic role of restorationist, legitimized multiple professional ways of knowing, and built collaborative capacity, thus charting a path from crisis to renewal for ecological and human communities and for fire management itself.