Why read Trauma Sponges?

Book cover of Trauma Sponges: Dispatches from the Scarred Heart of Emergency Response

Book description

Beyond an adrenaline ride or a chronicle of bravura heroics, this unflinching view of a Minneapolis firefighter reveals the significant toll of emergency response

In this remarkable memoir, Jeremy Norton marshals twenty-two years of professional experience to offer, with compassion and critique, an extraordinary portrayal of emergency responders. Trauma Sponges…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Trauma Sponges as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Leslie Morgan Steiner

Author

I loved this book because it took me to a world I could never go to alone – inside the world of high-stakes emergency fire and trauma response.

The work of urban firefighters is both more dramatic and more banal than I ever could have expected. Norton’s writing style is lyrical and poetic, not at all what I expected from a jaded firefighter writing about how tough it is to see people at the worst times of their lives.

Minneapolis firefighter Jeremy Norton sent me an advance copy of Trauma Sponges because we went to the same high school in…

From Leslie's 3 favorite reads in 2023.