Book Report: Bringing Out The Dead

Bringing Out The Dead
By Joe Connelly

From Back Cover:
In a narrative that moves with the furious energy of an ambulance run, we follow Frank Pierce, a paramedic in New York's Hell's Kitchen, 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.

First sentence:
I parked the ambulance in front of Hell's Kitchen walk-up number 414 and Larry and I pulled equipment from the back.


First off, one of the aspects of this book I am going to praise most is the imagery. When I searched amazon.com for a link to this book, I discovered a movie had been made, which floored me because several times while reading, I thought how great of a movie it would be. And, discovering Nicholas Cage plays the leading role floors me even more because there truly is no one more fitted--he matches exactly the image of tortured Frank Pierce I had built in my mind. I am in love with this book and am very curious to see if the movie is comparable.

Let me just say right now, this book has earned five very brightly shining stars out of five. A passage from Frank's POV:

"I was nineteen when I decided to become a medic, drive an ambulance. Perfect. Save lives and see the front lines, help the people who had stuck it out in the city I dreamed about. At the time, I believed the only way to avoid regret was to wrap my life completely in the present, in a succession of quick, kind acts, and no job seemed more suited to the moment than medic. Only much later did I realize I had chosen my parents' careers, a bus-driving nurse and a nursing driver.
"I was good at my job; there were even periods when my hands moved with a speed and skill that were beyond me and my mind worked with a cool authority I had never known. I would scrap with depression, I drank too much, but every once in a while I participated in a miracle, breathing life back into a young asthmatic, holding a tiny just-born jewel in my hands.
"But in the last year I had started to lose that control. I'd always had nightmares, but now the ghosts didn't wait for me to sleep. My wife left. I drank every day. Help others and you help yourself, that was my motto, but I hadn't saved anyone in months. It seemed all my patients were dying, everything I touched turned to shit. I waited, sure the sickness would break, tomorrow night, the next call, feeling the bottom fall away."



Joe Connelly worked as a medic for nine years, and he has played his knowledge perfectly. The movements and procedure are exact and vivid and technical, but also fluid and avoid sounding like a textbook.

"I put the mask over Burke's face and squeezed the bag, though my heart wasn't in it, hadn't been in a long time, and neither was Mr. Burke's, whose EKG rhythm on the monitor was a flat green line. The spirit was gone. Standing by the window. It we did manage to jump-start his heart, there'd be only blood to fill it.
"But my hands took over; they always do: trained on hundreds of cardiac arrests, they're automatic. I pulled out the long steel laryngoscope blade and inserted it into his mouth. Using it like a lever, I lifted the tongue up until I found the white vocal cords, like Roman columns, and I grabbed the thick plastic tube and carefully passed it through those gates, through the dark cartilage of the trachea, into the branched entrance of the lungs. I secured it, hooked the bag up to the tube, and pumped it hard."



The characters in this book are outstanding. Each person, both patient and fellow medic, is unique, and each plays a very different, symbolic role in Frank's life.

"We came to a jawbreaking stop in the middle of Forty-second Street and I jumped out, jumped into traffic just happy to get out, but when I saw our patient I jumped back in. We needed no further information. It was Noel, running toward me, his face soaked with blood.
" "Noel," I yelled, but he kept coming, bent low with his arms spread out like a linebacker. He had sliced up a tire and fastened pieces with string over his shoulders. Tin soup cans circled his wrists and ankles. One hand held a broken forty-ouncer, the other, a stringless violin. "Noel," I cried one last time, and then I locked the door and rolled the window up moments before his face struck it, almost breaking both. "Kill me," he cried. "Kill me, please." Blood clotted in his hair, matting in large clumps to his scalp. Bright-red blood dropped from his ears and ran freely down his neck. He beat the glass, yelling between blows. "You must kill me. No one else will. Please help."

"It was two years since we'd worked together, when he broke all crash records. I remembered sitting in the back of the ambulance treating a very bad asthmatic, Marcus driving us to the hospital. The trip took a very long time, even for Marcus, who always stopped for every red light, and at some point I realized we weren't moving, that in fact we hadn't moved for the equivalent of at least five red lights. I looked out the door, to see Marcus picking up his Chinese food. "The place was closing," he said. "If I don't take care of myself first, how am I gonna take care of anyone else?"


The cast of characters is large but organic and toward the end, their symbolism becomes clear. They each mean something, representing a part of Frank or a part of life itself, and how Frank deals with them reflects his inner arc. There is a smartness to the intricacies that held me captivated and thinking till the very last word.

And speaking of intricacies, Connelly really brought this book to life by using small details:
"I was born in the same hospital I was taking Burke to die in, Our Lady of Mercy, Fifty-sixth Street between Ninth and Tenth, but those who worked there, or were unfortunate enough to be treated there, called it Our Lady of Misery, or simply Misery. My father, who was also born in Misery, never referred to the place as anything except the butcher shop, following an appendectomy in which the surgeon left a sponge under his colon."

"The guard was no more helpful. He had taped a white square around his station and placed a sign on his desk: 'Please Stand Behind the White Line. Thank You.' With his dark glasses on and his arms crossed over the great wall of his chest, the guard ignored everyone outside the line. To those that crossed he growled, 'Don't make me take my glasses off.' He always gave them the option of not making him take his glasses off, for if the shades did have to come down, someone would be bounced, off the floor, the wall, even the street. A good bouncing could keep the crowd quiet up to an hour."

"Bus number eighty-six sat in the far corner, leaning somewhat, as if a great hand had crumpled it and tossed it there, a monument to too many red lights run, too many broadsides and head-ons, too many cracked-up drivers. The sides and front were chewed with dents, and a municipal-brown rust spread like a rash from the hood to the pitted lower panels. The rear bumper lay in a pile of broken parts nearby. Franco, the bus that would not die. In the dark he looked like an abandoned furnace."


This book races and sparkles, going for your throat with the first page and not letting go till the very end. There are just way too many things I love about this book--something on every page. To know this is a first novel is daunting. The pacing is perfect, the material fresh and unique and real. There is humor and sadness and blood and brains but also new life and discovery.

"Tom walked calmly around the front. I locked the door. "Get out," he said. "Get out of the bus."
"I got you good." I imitated the whistle.
"Yeah you got me. You're a psycho. Now come on. One minute I think you're going for suicide, the next it's partnercide. Unfit to command this vehicle."
"But Tom, I'm cured. The fight fixed me. Let's do some jobs."
"You look like someone who just stepped out of a three-day firefight. You ought to look in the mirror, Father Frank."
"Don't call me Father Frank. I've changed. Call me Frank Evil. Heartless Frank."
"You're a bleeding heart, Frank. You can't help it. That's what you are."
"I'm bled out, Tom; can't bleed without blood. And then the heart stops."
"All right, Frank Evil. It's your turn to get the coffee."


"I turned on the overhead flashers and headed for the jumper, 530 West Forty-eighth Street, 16M, Cy Coate's place. Who needed a dispatcher? I knew where I was headed. I rested my head on the back of the seat and let Franco idle forward. Left on Tenth, left again on Fifty-third, then charging down Eleventh at a walking pace. Every day is Judgment Day, I thought, the end is always here. I was starting to sound like Mr. Burke. There is no tomorrow. Tomorrow is right now. How many times have you died, Frank? How many times come back? I turned on the sirens and stopped under another red light.
"We have a call?" Tom asked.
"We're dispatching ourselves," I said. "Jumper, Forty-eighth Street, Ten to Eleven."
Tom, still breathing heavily, was waving his left arm forward, as if that would make me go faster. "Come on. You driving to a jumper down or a garage sale?"
"A jumper sale. A garage down. There's always tomorrow, Tom. You can't go too slow."
"I think you're having a bit of a relapse, Father. Now I gotta go recount the bottles of rubbing alcohol."


Five out of five stars for humor, detail, characterization, imagery, originality, character growth and symbolism, and for the sheer ability to captivate. Joe Connelly, you have a new fan for life.