Check nearby libraries
Buy this book
Perhaps only someone who has worked for almost a decade as a medic in New York City's Hell's Kitchen - as Joe Connelly has - could write a novel as riveting and fiercely authentic as Bringing Out the Dead.
In Frank Pierce, a brash EMS medic working the streets of Hell's Kitchen, Connelly gives us a man who is being destroyed by the act of saving people. Addicted to the thrill ("the best drug in the world") and the mission of the job, Frank is nevertheless drowning in five years' worth of grief and guilt - his own and others'. His wife has left him, he's drinking on the job, and just a month ago he "helped to kill" an eighteen-year-old asthmatic girl.
Now she's become the waking nightmare of all his failures: hallucination and projection, and as real to him as his own skin. And in reaction to her death, Frank has desperately resurrected a patient back into a life now little better than death.
In a narrative that moves with the furious energy of an ambulance run, we follow Frank through two days and nights: into the excitement and dread of the calls; the mad humor that keeps the medics afloat; the memories, distant and recent, through which Frank reminds himself why he became a medic and tries, in vain, to convince himself to give it up.
And we are with him as he faces his newest ghost: the resurrected patient, whose demands to be released into death might be the most sensible thing Frank has heard in months, if only he would listen.
Check nearby libraries
Buy this book
Previews available in: English
Showing 3 featured editions. View all 3 editions?
Edition | Availability |
---|---|
1 |
eeee
Libraries near you:
WorldCat
|
2 |
zzzz
Libraries near you:
WorldCat
|
3 |
aaaa
Libraries near you:
WorldCat
|
Book Details
Edition Notes
Classifications
External Links
The Physical Object
ID Numbers
Source records
Scriblio MARC recordCollingswood Public Library record
Internet Archive item record
marc_openlibraries_phillipsacademy MARC record
Library of Congress MARC record
marc_columbia MARC record
Work Description
A paramedic's life at the wheel of an ambulance in New York City. The novel follows Frank Pierce for two days and nights as he answers 911 calls. The reader is able to share his frustration with false alarms, his joy at saving people and his sorrow at killing them. A first novel.
Community Reviews (0)
Feedback?History
- Created April 1, 2008
- 13 revisions
Wikipedia citation
×CloseCopy and paste this code into your Wikipedia page. Need help?
July 13, 2024 | Edited by MARC Bot | import existing book |
November 26, 2020 | Edited by MARC Bot | import existing book |
May 15, 2019 | Edited by MARC Bot | import existing book |
July 30, 2014 | Edited by ImportBot | import new book |
April 1, 2008 | Created by an anonymous user | Imported from Scriblio MARC record |