Devotion in the line of family duty

Rescue Men, By Charles Kenney, PublicAffairs, 352 pp., $26

On Nov. 28, 1942, Pops Kenney was among the first firefighters to reach the burning Cocoanut Grove nightclub. The fire had moved with savage speed, trapping hundreds of revelers near exits that had been locked from the outside. The nightclub's revolving front door was a deathtrap where corpses piled high: Four hundred and ninety-two people eventually died.

Pops Kenney was a rescue man; his job was to get inside the blocked doorway even as hundreds tried desperately to get out. He "burrow[ed] as deeply into the doorway as possible. He reached in and pulled a body, half carrying, half dragging it to safety. He went back and grasped arms , shoulders, anything he could get hold of to pull people out of this hell." It's unknown how many lives Kenney saved that night before he himself collapsed from smoke inhalation.

So badly damaged were Kenney's lungs that he was forced to retire from the job he'd loved. Pops Kenney was the author's grandfather, and "Rescue Men" is a profoundly moving, multi dimensional story. It's a sweeping, impressively researched history of the Cocoanut Grove fire; it's a lyrical account of three generations of Kenneys who'd risk their lives saving others. Most of all, Charles Kenney's book is a family love story, a tale of Irish-Americans who often found it easier to rush into burning buildings than share the mental scars they'd suffered.

Charles Kenney, a former Globe reporter, writes about his own family and the extended family of firefighters. We see a recovering Pops walking the streets of Roslindale after midnight, haunted by the Cocoanut Grove, while his teenage son Sonny is aboard a submarine fighting the Japanese.

When Sonny returned home, he became a rescue man like his father. Sonny "felt as he had during the war -- as though he were part of a select fraternity, a group of good men united in a worthy cause." The author describes his father's heroism, the people pulled from burning buildings. We see Sonny as both brave public servant and devoted family man.

Tragedy struck the Kenneys again in 1959 during a massive fire on Boston's Cornhill Street. Flames broke a ladder rung Sonny was balanced on, and he fell "head first toward the street" and landed on his back. He survived, but his back had been broken. He'd never again be a firefighter.

Sonny started a business servicing fire prevention equipment. He hired Pops, as well as his growing sons. One Saturday, three generations of Kenneys drove past a huge fire in Dedham. Recognizing that there were not enough firefighters, Pops, Sonny, and 17-year-old Patrick jumped out of the car and helped.

After the death of his wife and father, Sonny developed alcohol problems . Ironically, the Cocoanut Grove became his salvation. Solving the mystery of that unexplained tragedy would become Sonny's obsession, and the author meticulously describes his father's years of painstaking research.

Sonny's son Tom became a Boston paramedic who, on one unforgettable 1981 day, helped save a man whose skull had been impaled by a steel bar. Eventually, Tom Kenney became a Cape Cod firefighter and later joined a special unit equipped to work in collapsed buildings. Tom Kenney's unit was activated on Sept. 11, 2001 , to make rescue efforts at Ground Zero in New York.

"Rescue Men" brims with breathtaking heroism, but its power comes from the quiet moments between crises, as men struggle to make sense of loss and love, devotion and suffering. It is a ferociously beautiful book about families, the ones we're born into and the ones we make along the way.