Caroline Paul

Who is Caroline Paul?

Caroline Paul is an American writer of fiction and non-fiction. She was raised in Connecticut, and educated in journalism and documentary film at Stanford University. She worked as a journalist at Berkeley public radio station KPFA before joining the San Francisco Fire Department, as one of the first women hired by the department. She worked most of her career on Rescue 2, where she and her crew were responsible for search and rescue in fires. Rescue 2 members were also trained and sent on scuba dive searches, rope and rappelling rescues, surf rescues, confined space rescues, all hazardous material calls, and the most severe train and car wrecks.

Her first book was the nonfiction memoir Fighting Fire, published in 1998. Her second, the 2006 historical novel East Wind, Rain is based on the Niihau Incident, a historical event in which a Japanese pilot crash-landed on the private Hawaiian island of Niihau, after the attack on Pearl Harbor. "East Wind, Rain" is currently being developed into a feature film. Lost Cat, published in 2013 and illustrated by her partner, artist Wendy MacNaughton, details Paul's high-tech search for her lost cat.