September 11, 2001

For these men, the fire service is their heart, their blood, and their brotherhood. On the morning of September 11, 2001, bound by that brotherhood, they responded to the alarm at the World Trade Center. They fought that day to save civilians, each other, and themselves, against an adversary they thought they knew, and with every step they took, came to realize they might not see another sunrise.

It’s the spring of 2001 in New York City. FDNY engineman and jazz musician Phil Coletti works his shifts on Engine 252 in Brooklyn. He never expected to fall in love with a woman he rescued from a suicide attempt on the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge, but he’s been on the job long enough to know he should expect the unexpected. Across the river in Manhattan, Captain Patrick Boyle, the most decorated officer in the history of the FDNY, lies in a hospital bed recovering from third-degree burns. He’s surprised to see his former lover at his bedside— especially since she ditched him to get engaged to a billionaire running for governor of NewYork—and he begins to wonder if the Job is truly for him. Over on Ladder 14, Bryan O’Rorke, a hard-charging truckie and son of a fireman killed in the line of duty, demands 110% from the guys on his crew. When a probationary firefighter from the Bronx, nineteen-year-old Harry Sturgis, arrives at the firehouse, it doesn’t take long before O’Rorke is putting the kid through the paces, and both men suffer the consequences of his unorthodox methods.

This visceral and unsettling novel tells the story of the firefighter’s life, culminating with the emergency response to the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center on a spectacular September Tuesday in 2001. It portrays the courage, pain, and devotion of the men and women who respond when the alarm is sounded, who follow an unwritten code borne of necessity and preservation, and who sometimes pay the ultimate price so others may live.