Black Flies
Shannon Burke’s novel Black Flies is relatively short, but it shines a shines a bright light onto the gritty underbelly of the Big City. If the novel was any longer, it may well have been unbearable.
Black Flies is the story of Oliver Cross, an idealistic graduate of Northwestern University. He follows his girlfriend from the Midwest to New York City with the hopes of joining her at Columbia Medical School, if he can get in the following year. Hoping that it will help his chances of admittance to med school, Ollie becomes a paramedic in New York City. He is promptly given what is described as the worst assignment in the city, Harlem.
The novel is more than just a catalog of medical traumas inflicted on and in a poor minority community. It takes an honest look at the lives of those who go where we won’t and talks about things that we’d rather not know about. The novel also exposes the emotional toll placed on those who serve as society’s first responders. Moral relativism is a nice asset to have when the ideals of the “real” world are tested on a practical level on every shift.
The book jacket indicates that Burke served as an EMT in Harlem, and the book carries his stamp of authenticity. The rawness in the book comes not from shock value (and there is plenty that is shocking) but from its brutal honesty. Black Flies is an excellent read and was named one of Amazon’s Top 100 Booksof 2008 (#65).
November 12, 2008 8:04 am 
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