LIGHTS AND SIRENS

A gripping and fast-paced memoir that provides a rare glimpse into the paramedic profession, where life and death is on the line every minute of every day.

Nine months of tying tourniquets and pushing new medications, of IVs, chest compressions, and defibrillator shocks—that was Kevin Grange’s initiation into emergency medicine when, at age thirty-six, he enrolled in the “Harvard of paramedic schools”: UCLA’s Daniel Freeman Paramedic Program, long considered one of the best and most intense paramedic training programs in the world.

Few jobs can match the stress, trauma, and drama that a paramedic calls a typical day at the office, and few educational settings can match the pressure and competitiveness of paramedic school. Blending months of classroom instruction with ER rotations and a grueling field internship with the Los Angeles Fire Department, UCLA’s paramedic program is like a mix of boot camp and med school. It would turn out to be the hardest thing Grange had ever done—but also the most transformational and inspiring.

An in-depth look at the trials and tragedies that paramedic students experience daily, Lights and Sirens is ultimately about the best part of humanity—people working together to help save a human life.

Kevin Grange graduated from UCLA’s Paramedic Education Program in 2011 and is an award-winning writer with the Society of American Travel Writers. His first book, Beneath Blossom Rain, recounts a twenty-four-day trek in the Himalayas, and he currently works as a paramedic with the National Park Service.