Co-authors Brad and Kiera Newbury offer dramatic accounts based on their experience in the paramedical realm in which cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and other lifesaving techniques often play, as they reveal, a crucial role. The opening drama presents an eight-year-old girl, Madeleine, eating at a restaurant with her family, suddenly choking on a piece of meat. As her father struggles to help her, a young nurse sitting nearby immediately applies professional techniques that will soon have the child free of the blockage and breathing normally. In high school, Madeleine, realizing that "preparedness saves lives," will form CPR classes, reaching state levels.

In another story, a teenage boy rescues a friend from drowning, applying chest compressions, his rapid intervention doubtless saving a life, encouraging him to become an emergency medical technician (EMT) and advising others to do likewise. When Neil, a firefighting novice, finds a colleague struggling with what could have been his final breaths, he intercedes and succeeds in reviving his co-worker. All these characters absorb the directive that permeates the Newburys' powerful treatise and appears at the conclusion of each of the book's episodes: "Be inspired. Get trained in CPR. Be ready and willing to act."

Newbury, president of the National Medical Education & Training Center, here collaborates with his daughter, herself an emergency medical professional and dedicated storyteller. Together they expertly set forth the critical necessity of all persons to react immediately and strongly to any medical crisis, demonstrating that such actions may give the sufferer full months or years of life with loved ones—time imbued with contemplative memories, the kind of "ripple effect" that is described deftly in this well-constructed work. The Newburys offer inspiration and impetus to all who wish to improve their own lives and those of others through active immersion in medical education and dedication.

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