Set on the hot summer streets of NYC and building to a fiery conclusion, No Man’s Ghost is a vibrant and thrilling look at the people who keep a city safe – and the ones who want to watch it burn.
Intrigued? Well read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Jason Powell’s No Man’s Ghost, which is out May 27th 2025.
It’s an FDNY firefighter’s first – and possibly last – week on the job…
Charles Davids is a probationary firefighter working his first week out of the academy. For Charles, quietly battling his lack of confidence is a daily challenge as his new officers coach him on life as a New York City firefighter. The men love to tease and prank the new guy, but when it comes to drilling and training, they’re clear that the job is no joke. As is said in the fire service: “let no man’s ghost return to say my training let me down.”
Unfortunately for Charles, his first week is the same week that Alan Johnson, an unstable and soon-to-be-ex-husband, gets kicked out and comes up with the idea to report fake fires at his wife’s apartment every night. Alan laughs at the thought of her being awakened nightly by sirens and horns – if he can’t sleep in their apartment, why the hell should she? But after days of crying wolf, Alan decides that fake fires aren’t enough…
Set on the hot summer streets of NYC and building to a fiery conclusion, No Man’s Ghost is a vibrant and thrilling look at the people who keep a city safe – and the ones who want to watch it burn.
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WHEN A WINDOW ON the sixth floor exploded, the crowd across the street gasped and backed away. A firetruck in front of the building had a ladder extended to the roof and the man climbing it paused at the sound of the blast, before continuing up quickly. On the ground, residents of the building rushed out of the entrance in pajamas and robes or shorts and t-shirts, some wrapped in bed sheets. They ran, bent low, hands over their heads, ash and glass and small debris falling around them. Police tape stretched from a lamppost on the corner to a green sanitation garbage pail dragged to the middle of the street, and cops waved the residents behind it to join a crowd of passersby who’d stopped to watch.
Those from the building huddled together at the front of the crowd and looked on in awe, wringing their hands or rubbing the backs of their arms. From where they stood, every visible window on the top floor was in flames. The building was only six stories high, and the heat from the fire could be felt at street level.
More firetrucks arrived. Firefighters poured from them, looked up quickly, then hurried to the building. A long hose made up of smaller ones connected together snaked its way from the side of a firetruck to the street, onto the sidewalk, then disappeared inside. More residents ran out, dodging the firefighters and hopping the hose, to join their neighbors across the street. On the top floor, black smoke began to seep from behind the fire in one of the windows; a thin, shifting cloud silhouetted against the night sky. The flames from that window flickered stubbornly, pulsed, then finally disappeared altogether. Water splashed out in spurts, raining down on the street below, and the crowd cheered.
The smoke from a second window turned black and the fire in that window went out too. A firefighter appeared in the first window, using a tool to knock shards of glass and charred wood away. The people on the street applauded at the sight of him, and the cheers grew louder. The firetruck in front of the building had another man climbing the ladder now, obscured occasionally by the new smoke coming from the windows. Those in the crowd with children crouched to the kids’ height and pointed him out.
Then two paramedics pulling a stretcher ran past the crowd to the building. From the entrance, two firefighters, one walking backward, came out carrying someone underneath the arms and knees. Either by chance or discretion, it was difficult to see the person being carried; but the firefighters weren’t struggling, which gave some in the crowd the impression that whoever it was didn’t weigh much. Someone small.
The two paramedics paired up with the two firefighters and got whoever it was onto the stretcher. One of the medics started pushing on the person’s chest while the other held an oxygen mask over their face, and together they rolled the stretcher to the back of an open ambulance. The two firefighters went back inside.
At the front of the crowd, furtive looks were exchanged and for a long moment, no one spoke. Then some obvious questions were asked, and an unofficial and unorganized census began. Next door neighbors looked for each other and made sure kids and elderly family members were out of the building and accounted for. Friends looked for friends who didn’t live on the same floor but lived in the building. Nearly everyone looked for the young girl with autism who lived on the fifth floor. She lived with her single mom, and everyone was relieved to find them both near the back of the crowd, on a bench.
Then the search narrowed. Each floor above the first had four apartments and everyone seemed generally confident that those who lived below the top floor had made it out safely. But what about the four families on six?
Two were accounted for right away. One family was away at Jersey Shore for the long
Fourth of July weekend. The man who lived next door knew that because he’d been asked to receive a package for them. He and his girlfriend were in the crowd with everyone else, and though they were obviously upset about the fire, they were physically okay. Firefighters had practically knocked his door off the hinges, he said, and rushed them out of the apartment. He didn’t know the status of his neighbors in the other two apartments—a couple in one, a widowed old lady in the other—but from what he was looking at from the street, he feared that if they weren’t out by now, then they weren’t okay. He said so, and those who heard him agreed.
The crowd looked back to the sixth floor. Flames still flickered in a few of the windows. Men could be seen in others, on their knees, or duckwalking with flashlights on their helmets or coats, one behind the other, aiming a thick hose at a corner unseen from the street. Then a rumbling sound like thunder, a crash, and they were gone.
