The Blood of Strangers: Stories from Emergency Medicine - Softcover

Huyler, Frank

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0520262514 ISBN 13: 9780520262515

Publisher: University of California Press, 2009

Synopsis

Reminiscent of Chekhov's stories, The Blood of Strangers is a visceral portrayal of a physician's encounters with the highly charged world of an emergency room. In this collection of spare and elegant stories, Dr. Frank Huyler reveals a side of medicine where small moments—the intricacy of suturing a facial wound, the bath a patient receives from her husband and daughter—interweave with the lives and deaths of the desperately sick and injured.

The author presents an array of fascinating characters, both patients and doctors—a neurosurgeon who practices witchcraft, a trauma surgeon who unexpectedly commits suicide, a wounded murderer, a man chased across the New Mexico desert by a heat-seeking missile. At times surreal, at times lyrical, at times brutal and terrifying, The Blood of Strangers is a literary work that emerges from one of the most dramatic specialties of modern medicine. This deeply affecting first book has been described by one early reader as "the best doctor collection I have seen since William Carlos Williams's The Doctor Stories."

About this title

Review:

"If Raymond Carver had been a doctor, these are the stories he would have written. There are no untarnished heroes here. This is the world as it is: lovely and disturbing all at once."--Atul Gawande, author of "Complications"
"Dr. Huyler' s short, intense book treats of only the most important matters: life and death. His prose is nearly invisible, and therefore it allows us to see what he is talking about. And once we see it, we are not likely to forget it. This is a young writer with a big mind--and an even bigger heart."--Paul Auster, author of "Oracle Night"
"Moving. What characterizes each of these miniatures is the candor in which they are offered, and their authenticity."--Richard Selzer, "San Francisco Chronicle"
"The author of these doctor stories is an E.R. physician as well as a poet, and his work shows the economy and sharp attention that both jobs demand."--"The New Yorker"

About the Author:

Frank Huyler is an emergency physician in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He is a graduate of Williams College and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and his poetry has appeared in such periodicals as The Atlantic Monthly, The Georgia Review, and Poetry, among others.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0520262514
• ISBN 13: 9780520262515
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 166