An emotional journey that offers a glimpse into a complicated world.
A former journalist tells the life story of an incredible pediatric heart surgeon in this hybrid biography and report of life inside the operating room.
Oristano (A Sportscaster’s Guide to Watching Football, 2013, etc.), who started his career covering professional sports, began volunteering at Children’s Medical Center in Dallas in 1997. There, he met Dr. Kristine Guleserian while working in the surgery recovery room, and he decided to record the story of her career. He begins by breaking down a day in the life of “Dr. G,” his nickname for her, as he observes her at work. He does a fantastic job of bringing the atmosphere of the operating room to life and offers a behind-the-scenes look at a bustling hospital environment (“Doctors and nurses in scrubs and lab coats shuffle into the room, many with the ubiquitous cup of Starbucks in hand”). These moments allow readers to enter the hidden world of those who routinely save lives, and he describes places and professionals that some healthy people may never meet. After setting the scene, Oristano introduces some of the harrowing stories of Guleserian’s patients, all young children who’ve suffered due to debilitating heart conditions. He interviews their families about their experiences, and one mother sums up the attitude of many parents of sick children when she wonders how to thank the woman who “literally saved your child’s life.” Interspersed with these emotional stories is Guleserian’s own history, told in her own words. Oristano weaves these threads together to create a book that’s both a biography and an in-depth look at the lives of patients and families who spend most of their time in hospitals, and who put all their hopes and fears in the hands of others. Although the combination is sometimes a bit messy, it offers a comprehensive picture of Guleserian’s life’s work, and of the tremendous effect she’s had on people’s lives. Readers don’t have to be familiar with medical terminology to find her story powerful and engrossing.
An emotional journey that offers a glimpse into a complicated world.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Authority Publishing
Review Posted Online: Dec. 19, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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