Joe Connelly

Frank Pierce, is a paramedic working the graveyard shift in Hell's Kitchen, Manhattan, a neighborhood in New York City, during the early-1990s. It takes place over the course of three nights, each night pairing Pierce with a different partner. Complaining of burn out, Pierce suffers from insomnia and begins having visions of a young girl named Rose who died while under his care. Once called Father Frank for his ability to save lives, Pierce starts to fear that he will soon face another life he cannot save, and begins attempting to get fired as his visions of Rose become more frequent. Soon, Pierce bonds with Mary, the daughter of a heart-attack victim whom he had previously saved, and who visits the father regularly at the hospital. Mary talks to Frank about her compassion toward helping others, which is shown contrasting Frank's feelings of burnout. It is through Mary that Frank is able to reconcile his feelings about Rose, and in the end, sleep.

Bringing Out the Dead is autobiographical in nature and follows the story of a paranoid and hollow-eyed paramedic who works the graveyard shift in Hell's Kitchen, the barrio bounding the phantasmagoria of Times Square. Having seen so much human suffering on the job, the main character of the book, Frank, has turned emotionally into himself, despondent to the point of becoming a drunk, his life a personal living hell.