The most recommended books about surgeons

Andrea Couture’s father, a well-known, recently retired surgeon, develops Alzheimer’s at the age of 67. As someone who also lost a parent at a young age, Embracing What Remains touched a deep place in my heart. I connected with how she processed her emotions through her writing. I also appreciated the way she balances her grief over his disease with the gratitude and joy she discovers in each moment. This is a beautifully written memoir! 

I liked this book firstly because of the level of authenticity, something that is very important as a nurse myself. The reader needs to be able to suspend disbelief and if there is a detail that is wrong, it becomes impossible to fully believe in the story. Getting this right requires a lot of research, particularly if the writer does not come from a medical background.

As with Jack Jordan’s book, I liked that the reader could feel sympathy for the surgeon, and could understand why she behaved as she did.

The story in this book also has some unexpected twists, and I enjoyed the tantalizing slow reveal of the back story so that the reader eventually comes to understand what has happened and why.

Dr. Gus Kappler contacted me via my Facebook page. After we spoke, I ordered his book, Welcome Home From Vietnam, Finally: A Vietnam Trauma Surgeon’s Memoir. Since I write Vietnam War fiction, I found his memoir both enlightening as to how it really was for the doctors saving the lives of our troops. M*A*S*H it is not, while themes in that classic show have a ring of truth. I will not mention them as you need to read the book to understand. The book is written from Gus’ heart and soul of his experiences and illustrated with the pictures he took in-country. The book is gritty, down-to-earth, and above all, how it truly was to work in a Vietnam War field hospital—the 85th Evacuation Hospital. You need to read this book.

I love historical novels, love learning about the past and what the past teaches us about today. Mary Sutter dreams of becoming a surgeon at a time when both men and women looked down on a female who dreamed outside her prescribed role. I admire how she fights through all the denouncers. What also interests me is her recognition of internal demons. Who doesn’t have those? I didn’t have my sights on becoming a doctor, but I’ve always wanted to be a writer. My studying writing in college seemed wasteful and elitist to naysayers. Even now, with three novels, I get patronizing looks as though I ought to be doing something more valuable with my time. As though writing is somehow an affront to people who hold real, 8-5 jobs.    

American Indian Jane Whitefield rescues people the police can’t protect and helps them find new identities and new homes. But now her job is complicated because Pete Hatcher, a Vegas gambling executive, is the target of Earl and Linda, a lethal tag team who will become very rich if Hatcher dies. The job is even more complicated because Jane has recently married Corey, a successful local surgeon, so it’s harder to maintain a low profile in the town. When Earl and Linda hone in on Corey, Jane realizes she has to protect her own family as well as her client, and her foes know every trick that she knows, too.

Mel Starr is an American author who deserves to be better known for his Chronicles of Hugh de Singleton set in late fourteenth-century England.

Hugh is a surgeon as well as bailiff of Brampton. In this eleventh tale, Hugh is escorted to Kensington Palace, his expertise required to treat the ailing Black Prince. But I knew things had to get more serious than that and, sure enough, murder is committed.

Mel Starr’s research is impeccable and I found myself in the heart of medieval England, encountering royalty, rogues, and worse villains. But Hugh’s medical knowledge means he can tell an accident from a deliberate killing and there’s no deceiving him when he’s on a murderer’s trail.

This superb biography is an engrossing account of the mysterious title surgeon and the doctor’s fascinating world. James Miranda Barry joined the British Army in 1813 as a regimental surgeon and served in colonial posts for the next fifty years. But Barry had been born Margaret Bulkley, an anatomical female—a surprise revealed after the doctor’s death.

Was Barry’s masquerade strategic, the doctor’s only route to a medical career? Was Barry a transgender person? I wondered if the “truth” would remain a mystery. Rachel Holmes persuaded me that the probable answer lies in a document “gathering dust” in Edinburgh’s medical school archives, a revelation she saves for the last chapter. 

Fitzharris’s book is a page-turner that takes readers into the macabre operating theaters of the Victorian era, when surgeons rarely washed their hands or cleaned their scalpels, anesthesia did not exist, and the “best” surgeons were simply those who worked the fastest.

Joseph Lister’s effort to convince the world of the merits of antisepsis is a true underdog story in which the stakes could not have been higher. 

I found Trauma: My Life as an Emergency Surgeon when I was on a read-all-the-books-about-emergency-medicine kick. I had recently gotten my paramedic certification and was trying to learn all I could about the science of medicine. My brain does not do well with textbooks, so I gravitated towards memoirs.

Unfortunately, being a great doctor and being a great—or even good—writer, seldom go hand in hand. Most of the doctor memoirs I came across were as thrilling as an Anatomy and Physiology textbook.

Dr. Cole’s book was different. He’s a skilled writer and his experiences are exciting and varied.

This is one of those books that a reader doesn’t forget.

I can discuss the sweeping story of a young woman who flees her home during the American Civil War and the trial and tribulations she encounters for years. It was first published in 1979 and is still a top seller. The fact it was written in the 70’s is one of the reasons it provides so many subjects for discussion. 

The author did a great job with the characters, but also with the settings and secondary characters. The end has an unexpected, but welcome, surprise.  

I remember my grandmother and her friends discussing this book when it was first released, and is one I’ve read more than once.