True Stories from a First Responder
September 5, 2022
Rodgers (Help from Heaven) recounts anecdotes from her time as a small-town volunteer EMT in this heartwarming volume. She details notable calls she’s responded to during the 30-plus years she’s spent on the first aid and emergency squad of Pine Cove, the pseudonym she gives to her quiet East Coast town, and highlights the role of the divine in their outcomes. The author tells of how she and her colleague braved a nor’easter to transport to the hospital a middle-aged man who had cut his leg in a fall, and she credits God for keeping her safe from falling trees and downed power lines. Recalling a man diagnosed with attention-seeking disorder who asked for unneeded hospital visits several times per week, Rodgers suggests that God was teaching her the “importance of empathy and understanding.” Though the chapters can feel formulaic, Rodgers’s eye for detail and the variety of her experiences will hold interest, as when she describes the waterproof “Gumby suit” she had to wear while evacuating an elderly couple from their flooded home. Many of the anecdotes are relatively low-stakes—in one, Rodgers tells of how she rescued an injured robin—but Christian readers will appreciate Rodgers’s wholesome stories about the workings of God in ordinary life. Uplifting and simple, these anecdotes will inspire.