A haunting and exquisitely-observed collection of medical vignettes that brilliantly captures the intense drama of the Emergency RoomReminiscent 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 elegant stories, Dr Frank Huyler reveals a side of medicine – the intricacy of suturing a facial wound, the bath a patient receives from her husband and daughter – interwoven with the lives of the 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-seaking missile. At times surreal, at times lyrical, at times brutal and terrifying, The Blood of Strangers is a deeply affecting first book from one of the most dramatic specialities of modern medicine.

A grieving doctor seeks redemption as a foreign relief worker—only to be caught in the fog of war—in this "vivid and compassionate" novel (Kirkus).Shattered by his wife''s death, and by his own role in it, successful cardiologist Charles Anderson volunteers to assist with earthquake relief in an impoverished Islamic country in a constant state of conflict with its neighbor. But when the refugees he''s come to help do not appear and artillery begins to fall in the distance along the border, the story takes an unexpected turn.This haunting, resonant tour de force about one man''s desire to live a moral life offers a moving exploration of the tensions between poverty and wealth, the ethics of intervention, the deep cultural differences that divide the world, and the essential human similarities that unite it.

FINALIST FOR THE JAN MICHALSKI PRIZE FOR LITERATUREAnother "pitch-perfect book of short essays" (New York Times Book Review) from the acclaimed author of Blood of Strangers, this one exploring the contemporary practice of medicine from the perspective of a doctor with 25 years of experience in the ER.In the late 1990s, a young physician in Albuquerque, New Mexico, published a stunning memoir of his experiences in the highly charged world of the ER. Presented in a series of powerful, poetic vignettes, The Blood of Strangers became an instant classic.Now, over two decades later, Dr. Frank Huyler delivers another dispatch from the trenches—this time from the perspective of middle age. In portraits visceral, haunting, sometimes surreal, Huyler reveals the gritty reality of medicine practiced on the razor''s edge between life and death.From the doomed, like the Iraq vet with a brain full of shrapnel, to the self-destructive, like the young woman who inserts a sewing needle into her heart, to the transcendent, like the homeless Navajo artist whose sketches charm the nurses, Huyler assembles a profound mosaic of human suffering and grace, complemented by episodes from his personal life: the hail that fell the night his wife gave birth, his drive through a snowstorm to see his father in a Colorado ER, the beautiful wedding of his childhood friend with terminal cancer. Melding hard-earned wisdom with a poet''s crystalline vision, Huyler evokes the awesome burden of responsibility, the exhaustion, the relief of a costume disco nurse party, and those rare occasions when the confluence of luck and science yield, in the author''s words, "moments of breathtaking greatness." White Hot Light offers an unforgettable portrait of a field that illuminates society at its most vulnerable, and its most elemental.

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' "The Doctor Stories".

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."

Reeling from his wife’s death, cardiologist Charles Anderson is looking for meaning and purpose in his life. He volunteers to work as the doctor at a refugee camp, in a poverty-ridden Islamic country, set up to take the survivors of a devastating earthquake. But tensions rise to dangerous levels as bombs start to fall. Forced to continually re-evaluate his conceptions of what constitutes a good deed, Charles pushes himself ever further on his quest to do something morally unequivocal in a perilous and unforgiving land.A vivid and absorbing account of the limits of benevolence, Right of Thirst offers a subtle exploration of the clash between East and West, rich and poor, and the profound conflicts that divide the world, as well as the fundamental human qualities that unite us.

A haunting and exquisitely-observed collection of medical vignettes that brilliantly captures the intense drama of the Emergency RoomReminiscent 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 elegant stories, Dr Frank Huyler reveals a side of medicine – the intricacy of suturing a facial wound, the bath a patient receives from her husband and daughter – interwoven with the lives of the 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-seaking missile. At times surreal, at times lyrical, at times brutal and terrifying, The Blood of Strangers is a deeply affecting first book from one of the most dramatic specialities of modern medicine.

A grieving doctor seeks redemption as a foreign relief worker—only to be caught in the fog of war—in this "vivid and compassionate" novel (Kirkus).Shattered by his wife''s death, and by his own role in it, successful cardiologist Charles Anderson volunteers to assist with earthquake relief in an impoverished Islamic country in a constant state of conflict with its neighbor. But when the refugees he''s come to help do not appear and artillery begins to fall in the distance along the border, the story takes an unexpected turn.This haunting, resonant tour de force about one man''s desire to live a moral life offers a moving exploration of the tensions between poverty and wealth, the ethics of intervention, the deep cultural differences that divide the world, and the essential human similarities that unite it.

FINALIST FOR THE JAN MICHALSKI PRIZE FOR LITERATUREAnother "pitch-perfect book of short essays" (New York Times Book Review) from the acclaimed author of Blood of Strangers, this one exploring the contemporary practice of medicine from the perspective of a doctor with 25 years of experience in the ER.In the late 1990s, a young physician in Albuquerque, New Mexico, published a stunning memoir of his experiences in the highly charged world of the ER. Presented in a series of powerful, poetic vignettes, The Blood of Strangers became an instant classic.Now, over two decades later, Dr. Frank Huyler delivers another dispatch from the trenches—this time from the perspective of middle age. In portraits visceral, haunting, sometimes surreal, Huyler reveals the gritty reality of medicine practiced on the razor''s edge between life and death.From the doomed, like the Iraq vet with a brain full of shrapnel, to the self-destructive, like the young woman who inserts a sewing needle into her heart, to the transcendent, like the homeless Navajo artist whose sketches charm the nurses, Huyler assembles a profound mosaic of human suffering and grace, complemented by episodes from his personal life: the hail that fell the night his wife gave birth, his drive through a snowstorm to see his father in a Colorado ER, the beautiful wedding of his childhood friend with terminal cancer. Melding hard-earned wisdom with a poet''s crystalline vision, Huyler evokes the awesome burden of responsibility, the exhaustion, the relief of a costume disco nurse party, and those rare occasions when the confluence of luck and science yield, in the author''s words, "moments of breathtaking greatness." White Hot Light offers an unforgettable portrait of a field that illuminates society at its most vulnerable, and its most elemental.

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' "The Doctor Stories".

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."

Reeling from his wife’s death, cardiologist Charles Anderson is looking for meaning and purpose in his life. He volunteers to work as the doctor at a refugee camp, in a poverty-ridden Islamic country, set up to take the survivors of a devastating earthquake. But tensions rise to dangerous levels as bombs start to fall. Forced to continually re-evaluate his conceptions of what constitutes a good deed, Charles pushes himself ever further on his quest to do something morally unequivocal in a perilous and unforgiving land.A vivid and absorbing account of the limits of benevolence, Right of Thirst offers a subtle exploration of the clash between East and West, rich and poor, and the profound conflicts that divide the world, as well as the fundamental human qualities that unite us.