Trauma Sponges
Dispatches from the Scarred Heart of Emergency Response
LISTEN: Author Jeremy Norton chats with three Minneapolis Fire Dept. colleagues on the UMN Press podcast.
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 captures in arresting detail the personal and social toll the job exacts, as well as the unique perspective afforded by sustained direct encounters with the sick, the dying, and the dead.
"While many bear witness to injustice and decide that silence best serves their privilege, some use their privilege to dismantle the inequities that created the disparities in the first place. Jeremy Norton is the latter."
—Dr. Michele Harper, author of The Beauty in Breaking
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 captures in arresting detail the personal and social toll the job exacts, as well as the unique perspective afforded by sustained direct encounters with the sick, the dying, and the dead.
From his first days as a rookie firefighter and emergency medical technician to his command of a company as a twenty-year veteran, Norton documents the life of an emergency responder in Minneapolis: the harrowing, heartbreaking calls, from helping the sick and hurt, to reassuring the scared and nervous, to attempting desperate measures and providing final words. In the midst of the uncertainty, fear, and loss caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, Norton and his crew responded to the scene of George Floyd’s murder. The social unrest and racial injustice Norton had observed for years exploded on the streets of Minneapolis, and he and his fellow firefighters faced the fires, the injured, and the anguish in the days and months that followed.
Norton brings brutally honest insight and grave social conscience to his account, presenting a rare insider’s perspective on the insidious role of sexism and machismo in his profession, as well as an intimate observer’s view of individuals trapped in dire circumstances and a society ill equipped to confront trauma and death. His thought-provoking, behind-the-scenes depiction of the work of first response and last resort starkly reveals the realities of humanity at its finest and its worst.
Retail e-book files for this title are screen-reader friendly with images accompanied by short alt text and/or extended descriptions.
Awards
Minnesota Book Award — Finalist, Memoir & Creative Nonfiction category
With clarity and sensitivity, Jeremy Norton has written an eye-opening book that shows us what firefighting is often about: encountering medical emergencies more often than fires, helping strangers through the trauma of death and loss, and witnessing the ways that racism, poverty, and violence singe our society. Theirs is a particular courage that we must all celebrate.
Dr. Sunita Puri, author of That Good Night: Life and Medicine in the Eleventh Hour
While many bear witness to injustice and decide that silence best serves their privilege, some use their privilege to dismantle the inequities that created the disparities in the first place. Jeremy Norton is the latter.
Dr. Michele Harper, author of The Beauty in Breaking
Trauma Sponges is a powerful book, by turns tender, brutal, and incisive, full of wisdom and wonder. Jeremy Norton’s compassionate vision and vivid, well-crafted prose make this much more than a collection of shock stories. Here we have it all: brilliantly rendered scenes of crisis and grief, a close-up view of the physical (and spiritual) grind firefighters embrace, a celebration of the communities they serve, existential reflections earned on the margins of life and death, and piercing critiques of some of the outmoded, frankly misogynist and racist attitudes that have plagued the station house. Norton is a thoughtful, courageous guide, our Virgil taking us through infernos both actual and metaphorical.
Sam Lipsyte, author of No One Left to Come Looking for You and The Ask
If you’re looking for a hero with all the answers, that is not Jeremy Norton. Norton is the Poet Laureate of Emergency Services, a writer whose talent and heart spark and crackle on every page, devastating and dazzling with equal measure. He sorts through the wreckage of the lives he's saved and those that were lost, presenting us with what remains: our raw humanity and, somehow, hope.
Nora McInerny, founder of the Terrible, Thanks for Asking podcast and best-selling author of Bad Vibes Only
With striking precision, Trauma Sponges vividly portrays the profound impact the job takes on EMS providers while also highlighting the distinct outlook that arises from enduring firsthand interactions with those in dire medical emergencies.
EMS Insider
For readers who love true medicine books and for those who ponder life and death and what's in between, Trauma Sponges will be totally absorbing.
The Guam Daily Post
Norton's writing devastates and entertains, simultaneously. The descriptions viscerally activate adrenaline.
Racket
Norton's thought-provoking, behind-the-scenes depiction of the work of first response and last resort starkly reveals the realities of humanity at its finest and its worst. Trauma Sponges is both interesting and informative.
Northern Wilds
Jeremy Norton pulls no punches in his memoir, but he writes to enlighten the reader and open their hearts and minds to the realities of EMS work so it can be changed for the better.
EMS World
CONTENTS
TERMS AND ABBREVIATIONS xi
INTRODUCTION THIS IS NOT THE MINNEAPOLIS BACKDRAFT xiii
1 911 IS NOT, IN FACT, A JOKE 1
2 YOUR FRIENDS AND NEIGHBORS 20
3 EXILE IN FIREVILLE 37
4 THE LAYING OF HANDS 54
5 THE HEART REMAINS A LONELY HUNTER 68
6 THROWING ROCKS AT GOD 82
7 BOYS DON’T CRY 96
8 ANTE UP 113
9 THANATOS IS A MOTHERFUCKER 130
10 FATES AND FURIES 144
11 WHAT WE TALK ABOUT WHEN WE TALK ABOUT COVID 161
12 KETAMINE OR KILL A MAN? 194
13 ARBITERS OF EXISTENCE 235
14 THINNEST OF MARGINS 245
15 THE ASSASSINATION OF GEORGE FLOYD BY THE COWARD DEREK CHAUVIN 265
16 A HASHTAG BRINGS NO ONE BACK 298
17 ORPHANS 315
18 TRAUMA SPONGES: THE THINGS WE CARRY 328
CONCLUSION BURNT NORTON 345
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 355
LUCK WON’T SAVE YOU BUT THESE BOOKS MIGHT: A READING LIST 361
