Cutting for Stone
by Abraham Verghese
Did I have the wrong idea about this! I thought it was something about a man's travels through the Middle East to discover his father. There's a man and a father in here, and discovery, but beyond that I was dead wrong.
It begins with two nuns trained in nursing traveling to a mission somewhere in Africa. On the ship there is also a surgeon traveling to Addis Ababa in Ethiopia. Typhoid erupts among the ship's crew; there are no modern medical supplies on board; and the surgeon is so dehydrated from seasickness that he's unconscious when the nuns seek him out to get help.
And from that perilous beginning we journey on though the lives of one of the nuns, the surgeon, two doctors, the head nun at the hospital, and two twin boys, identical in form but very different in certain mysterious ways. If you think I've said too much, I'm sorry, but you could have gotten all this from the book cover. Which contains spoilers, IMHO--don't read it.
I don't know how a person comes to write such an amazing book. If I tried to do so, it would be to have an opportunity to put parables of wisdom into the mouths of simple folk, and tell them as innocently as Ghosh told the story of Abu Kassem's slippers. Worth the reading just for that story. But be prepared to suffer as these people suffered, and rejoice in their strength to endure and conquer their own pain in the service of others.
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