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WHITE HOT LIGHT

Name: WHITE HOT LIGHT
Author: Frank Huyler
ISBN: 978-0-06-293733-9

TWENTY-FIVE YEARS IN EMERGENCY MEDICINE

by Frank Huyler ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 25, 2020

The title aptly describes the illumination Huyler brings to patient care—and to writing about it.

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Tales from the emergency room, told with no-nonsense brevity, clarity, and compassion. In this long-awaited follow-up to The Blood of Strangers (1999), Huyler returns with more interesting, largely stand-alone stories from his work in an ER in Albuquerque. The author is a much-traveled chronicler who has also published two novels as well as poetry in the Atlantic and elsewhere, and at this stage of life, he displays a certain weariness and melancholy. However, this does not deter from the urgency to do the right thing. So Huyler recounts his lecture to the heroin addict he brought back to life and the process of suturing with painstaking care the facial slash that a man inflicted on his girlfriend with a broken beer bottle. Many of the emergencies the author encounters are truly life or death, and he marvels at a variety of medical advances—e.g., the CPR machine that revived a heart attack victim or the defibrillator that shocked the heart of a man just in time for him to be rushed to surgery. He also expounds on the remarkable nature of the human body. “In the deepest sense our lives are electrical currents,” he writes. “Charged elements—sodium and potassium and countless others—flow back and forth across membranes with impossible complexity.” Huyler enriches the text with sketches of his colleagues and of some of the patients who are ER regulars as well as anecdotes from a life growing up in foreign cities with his teacher parents. Throughout, the author pleasingly describes the various settings. “The winter sun in New Mexico is breathtaking,” he writes. “Driving as it rises is dangerous here. If you let it, it will fill your windshield with white hot light, and blind you in the mirror with its power.” The title aptly describes the illumination Huyler brings to patient care—and to writing about it.

Pub Date: Aug. 25, 2020

ISBN: 978-0-06-293733-9

Page Count: 272

Publisher: Perennial/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: June 2, 2020

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2020

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | HEALTH & FITNESS | SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

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RIGHT OF THIRST
by Frank Huyler

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by Frank Huyler

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THE BLOOD OF STRANGERS
by Frank Huyler

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FRIGHTEN THE HORSES

by Oliver Radclyffe ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 17, 2024

A stunning memoir about discovering one’s identity late in life.

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A transgender man comes to terms with his identity.

Born into a wealthy English family, Radclyffe began life as a girl in denial about her crushes on other women. After coming out as gay, the author visited the Bluestockings bookstore in New York City, a short train ride from the Connecticut home where Radclyffe was masquerading as a housewife despite suffering from hair and weight loss and random moments of pain associated with gender dysphoria. At Bluestockings, the author met and began dating a woman. When they slept together, Radclyffe imagined having a phantom penis, which, in retrospect, he recognized as a possible sign that he was transgender. However, only after getting a divorce and falling in love with another woman did he come out as a man. Although his relationship didn’t survive his transition, Radclyffe found acceptance among his chosen family, his parents, and his children. Perhaps most importantly, he discovered self-acceptance and learned that his identity didn’t negate his ability to be a loving and effective parent. “The world had tried to tell me that I couldn’t care for myself,” he writes, “and also for my children, that I couldn’t be trans and queer and be a source of stability.…Whatever my failings as a parent—and I knew there had been many—my children would walk out into the world armed with all the tools I’d once lacked: courage, curiosity, the confidence to form their own opinions and trust their own instincts.” This book is consistently frank, vulnerable, perspicacious, and insightful, covering an impressive variety of aspects of the transgender experience in intimate, lyrical language and dry, compassionate humor. The author’s analysis of privilege is particularly refreshing, as is his description of transitioning as a parent.

A stunning memoir about discovering one’s identity late in life.

Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2024

ISBN: 9780802163158

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Roxane Gay Books/Grove

Review Posted Online: June 14, 2024

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2024

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

- PROFILES
Fall Preview 2024: Oliver Radclyffe

- PERSPECTIVES
This Fall’s Nonfiction Gets Up Close and Personal

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WAR

by Bob Woodward ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 15, 2024

An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.

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Documenting perilous times.

In his most recent behind-the-scenes account of political power and how it is wielded, Woodward synthesizes several narrative strands, from the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel to the 2024 presidential campaign. Woodward’s clear, gripping storytelling benefits from his legendary access to prominent figures and a structure of propulsive chapters. The run-up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is tense (if occasionally repetitive), as a cast of geopolitical insiders try to divine Vladimir Putin’s intent: “Doubt among allies, the public and among Ukrainians meant valuable time and space for Putin to maneuver.” Against this backdrop, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham implores Donald Trump to run again, notwithstanding the former president’s denial of his 2020 defeat. This provides unwelcome distraction for President Biden, portrayed as a thoughtful, compassionate lifetime politico who could not outrace time, as demonstrated in the June 2024 debate. Throughout, Trump’s prevarications and his supporters’ cynicism provide an unsettling counterpoint to warnings provided by everyone from former Joint Chief of Staff Mark Milley to Vice President Kamala Harris, who calls a second Trump term a likely “death knell for American democracy.” The author’s ambitious scope shows him at the top of his capabilities. He concludes with these unsettling words: “Based on my reporting, Trump’s language and conduct has at times presented risks to national security—both during his presidency and afterward.”

An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.