summary:

when confronted by raging fires or deadly accidents, volunteer fireman Taylor McAden feels compelled to take the terrifying risk - risks no-one else in the department would ever take - to save lives. But there is one leap of faith Taylor cannot bring himself to make. He cannot fall in love. For all his adult years, Taylor has sought out women who need to be rescued, women he leaves as soon as their crisis is over, as soons as the relationship starts to become truly intimate.

Then, one day, a raging, record-breaking storm hits his small Southern town. Denise Holton, a young single mother, is driving through it when her car skids off the road. With her is her four-year-old son, Kyle, a boy with severe learning disabilities for whom she has sacrificed everything. Taylor finds her unconscious and bleeding, but when she wakes, the chilling truth is clear: Kyle is gone.

During the search for Kyle, a connection between Taylor and Denise takes root. Taylor doesn't know that this rescue will be different from all the others, demanding far more than raw physical courage. That it will dare him to live life to the fullest. That it will require him to open doors to his past that were slammed shut by pain. That it will lead him to the possibility of his own rescue from a life lived without love.

besides The Rescue, there are other books from Nicholas Sparks..