Rescue Men

This is a very insightful and interesting read. It gives the reader a chance to actually follow the lives of a true firefighter family, the trials and tribulations of life surrounding the job. Hard to put it down as it begins to really take shape.

First let me say this I did not pay the cover price for this book and that helped with my review. As a firefighter for a city just north of Boston; I found this book to be very good for many reasons. First it was about fires I remember hearing about. I was not alive for some of them, but I did hear about them from men in the fire service. I am also intrigued by the local nature of this book. I know many of the locations described throughout the book. I can remember the scenes that he paints. As some other reviews indicate there is some jumping around but then again Kenney does a decent job of staying on track. I viewed it more of parallel stories. He would talk about something happening in his actual family and then tell a story about a major event happening in the "other" family the BFD. So as a member of the fire service and the local community I can offer a somewhat bias opinion. The book is good and even better if you get it for a bargain.

My grandfather was a Boston policeman, and he had to remove bodies from the Cocoanut Grove. My grandmother said he had nightmares for years after The Grove. The author has been accused of playing on his father's alcoholism-- Lots of people are alcoholics. Alcoholism runs in families. It runs in Irish families, it runs in African American families, and in the families of some firemen and policmen. That's life. Better to talk about it than sweep it under the rug. I'm glad Charles' dad got sober.

Why would anyone, ever, run into a burning building, and why would a retired firefighter care about how a decades-old fire that killed 492 people started? Charles Kenney, in his story about generations of firefighters and rescue men, offers a rare and compelling look at some of these special people, their motivation, their families, their lives. This book gives us a glimpse of the hearts and souls under the uniforms. It is a sympathetic tribute to some of our communities' first responders, and all the more meaningful in our post 9/11 world.