Danielle Ofri

Booklist

*Starred Review*

Ofri chose to complete her medical education amid the kinetic life-and-death drama of Bellevue, the oldest public hospital in the U.S. She now tells the profoundly affecting story of her many rites of passage on the journey from student to doctor, describing with openhanded humility and candor her most awkward and terrifying moments--skirmishes with an elderly patient who suddenly turns aggressively amorous and an unrelentingly belligerent IV drug abuser--as well as revelatory encounters with a nurse who comforts her when she becomes paralyzed with fear over the risk of contracting AIDS and an astonishingly courageous and gracious lung cancer patient. Ofri, whose literary passion inspired her to help found the Bellevue Literary Review, learns something essential about healing, compassion, and death, just "how complex the act of becoming a doctor really is," and what it means to be human from everyone she comes in contact with, from the loving family members of terminally ill patients to a cantankerous but caring doctor who ends up committing suicide. And she relates each transforming experience in prose so powerful in its lucidity and quest for truth that it arouses both tears and wonder.

Donna Seaman