An intelligent dramatization of an important debate in health care policy, hampered by a baffling conclusion.
In this political thriller, battle lines between family and friends are drawn over a new pharmaceutical bill floated in Congress.
Jamie Steiner grew up in Louisville, Kentucky, and anguished over his mother’s debilitating illness, one for which no relief appeared to be in sight. He decided to become a scientist, motivated to discover a cure for what ailed her; earned a Ph.D. in chemistry; and landed a job at Rauscher Pharmaceuticals. Jamie was able to uncover a causal link between his mother’s exposure to asbestos and her lung disease, and was instrumental in devising a cure for it. But now his employer repeatedly inflates the price of the drug and blocks the development of a new, considerably less expensive alternative. Meanwhile, two of his childhood friends, Earl and Herman Metzger, are at loggerheads over the regulation of the pharmaceutical industry, an ideological contest skillfully portrayed by Stemmle (Geezer Sex!: A Love Story, 2014). Earl is a congressman who advocates largely unregulated markets and Herman is a bureaucrat at the Food and Drug Administration. Further complicating matters, Earl marries Isabel, the daughter of John Tilson Rauscher, the CEO of Rauscher Pharmaceuticals, who contributes generously to his re-election campaigns and bankrolls his comfortable style of living. Furthermore, one of Earl and Herman’s younger brothers is ill due to asbestos exposure, and the Metzger family quietly struggles to pay for his health care. The mounting conflict crescendos when Earl, Herman, and Jamie all are called to testify at a congressional hearing in advance of a major vote on a bill that introduces new regulations of the pharmaceutical industry. Stemmle writes with impressive self-assurance about both politics and science, ably capturing the potential tug of wars within each and between the two. With considerable nuance, he demonstrates the many ways in which the personal overlays the political, pitting emotion against principle. But the author betrays the novel’s admirable evenhandedness when he gratuitously transforms John into a gangster who cruelly pimps out Isabel for political gain. The drama of the plot’s denouement is undermined by its bewildering implausibility, an ending so cartoonish that it seems written by another, less sophisticated writer.
An intelligent dramatization of an important debate in health care policy, hampered by a baffling conclusion.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5481-4415-9
Page Count: 324
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 28, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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