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Trauma Room Two

Name: Trauma Room Two
Author: Philip Allen Green
ISBN: 978-1-51-190002-7

by Philip Allen Green ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 3, 2015

Well-written stories about keeping one’s head and humanity amid the rawness of emergency medicine.

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Sixteen short stories explore the urgent tensions of life and death in a rural hospital’s emergency room.

Although the stories and characters in emergency-medicine physician Green’s debut collection are fictional, he bases them on real experience, giving readers an insider’s look at a rural trauma ward. Unsurprisingly, several stories deal with loss, tragedy, and the difficulty of letting go. Others touch on misdiagnoses of character: a seemingly neglectful meth-head mother turns out to be a good Samaritan (“Saviors”); in “Family,” an alcoholic and annoying ER regular redeems himself by running off a threatening pill-seeker and becomes the hospital’s trusted security guard (“sometimes all a person needs is a chance to prove himself”). Big-city ERs are commonly the setting for medical dramas, so the particular challenges of an understaffed and remote emergency department will be less familiar to readers, and the stories exploring these particular challenges are among the collection’s strongest. “This is the only ER in town. I am the only ER doctor awake in the county right now,” writes the narrator (also called Dr. Green) in “The Crew.” He’s awakened at 2 a.m. for an incoming trauma: four teenagers dead or dying from a car accident on prom night. In the big city, a team of 20 specialists might be on hand; here, the trauma team is one doctor (himself), two nurses, and a respiratory tech. The title comes from a private joke—they call themselves “the crew that do,” which is “a quiet comfort in the middle of the night.” They need this comfort even more on this night; doing the math, Dr. Green realizes that there is a “one-in-fourteen chance that one of our kids was in that car.” It’s the paradoxical, poignant condition of their work that, to function well, they have become a tightknit family who can shut down their emotions—even if it could mean coding one of their own family members. Some stories veer beyond poignancy into the sentimental, however, as in “Transitions,” about a high-school athlete whose death motivates her team to win the state championship.

Well-written stories about keeping one’s head and humanity amid the rawness of emergency medicine.

Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2015

ISBN: 978-1-51-190002-7

Page Count: 162

Publisher: CreateSpace

Review Posted Online: Oct. 30, 2015

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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BETWEEN SISTERS

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2003

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...

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Sisters in and out of love.

Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.

Pub Date: May 1, 2003

ISBN: 0-345-45073-6

Page Count: 400

Publisher: Ballantine

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

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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.