Mountain Vision Publishing
Many summits, many views
SIREN CALL
When you do this job well, you can save more than the lives of your patients.
William Marshall, emergency medical technician with Mountain EMS, dedicates his life to providing patient care in Banff National Park. A seasoned medic, ‘Marsh’ responds to highway wrecks, medical calls, and backcountry disasters with compassion for the injured and a heart for the homeless. Struggling with his past and with a desperately understaffed service, Marsh coaches new-hire Miranda Walker through the learning curve of the job. While answering to an overbearing medical director, and with the local fire department vying to take over Mountain EMS, Marsh and Miranda confront public and
private emergencies
with professionalism, courage, and humour.
Against the odds, they turn their service and each other’s lives around.
Through reading Siren Call, I have a deepened appreciation and respect for EMTs and paramedics, and profoundly so – I won’t see an ambulance now without hearkening back to this book. Graeme Pole has written a compelling story, as intimate and raw and vigorous as the working life of a rural paramedic.
Fabienne Calvert Filteau, author of Second Growth
Siren Call is an escape into a different reality. It will have you hoping that if you are ever in need of a medic, it will be someone like William Marshall taking the call.
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Megan Kopp, review in Crowfoot Media
Along with showcasing the skill and humanity of his paramedics, Pole also strives to show how challenging and difficult the emergency medical trade can be. Instead of dumbing down his story, he puts it all out in there in its complex and often messy glory.
Siren Call is at times beautiful and uplifting, just as it is educational and heartbreaking. Pole’s description of place could only be written by someone who not only has spent a lifetime – 34 years in his case – exploring the Rockies, but [who] also understands this often overwhelming landscape.
Rob Alexander, review in the Rocky Mountain Outlook