The Six-Liter Club
A Novel
-
- $11.99
-
- $11.99
Publisher Description
ELUSIVE WHISPERS, A DARK CLOSET, STRONG ARMS... DOES SHE EVEN WANT TO REMEMBER?
Camille Weller has arrived as the first African-American attending in the trauma service of the Medical College of Virginia. Never mind that the locker rooms are labeled "doctors" and "nurses" rather than "men" and "women" or that her dark skin communicates "incapable" to many of her white male colleagues in the OR. Camille has battled prejudices her entire career, but those battles were small spats compared to what she faces now.
When a colleague discovers a lump in her breast, she believes Dr. Camille Weller is the best doctor for her. Together, they decide on a course of treatment that bucks the established medical system, keeping Camille firmly in the crosshairs of male surgeons already riddled with skepticism and suspicion.
Her success as a surgeon is jeopardized further when dark whispers from her childhood in Africa plague Camille’s thoughts. Bewildering panic attacks instill fear in a surgeon bent on maintaining the control, pace, and direction of her own life. Unable to shake the flashes of memory, Camille is forced to face a past she has not acknowledged since the death of her father on an African mission field. Who was he? Who was she? And why would either of those answers affect her present?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Surgeon and author Kraus offers his longtime fiction readers a highly charged tale of overcoming prejudice both racial and sexual. Set in 1984 at the Medical College of Virginia, its first black female trauma surgeon, Dr. Camille Weller, gets a fast initiation into the Six-Liter Club. Few physicians ever enter this elite group; entrance is gained by bringing a patient back who's lost six liters of blood. Weller manages to achieve this honor on her first day and then, in quick succession, also manages to break house rules, which divide the male and female staff. Weller has a lot to contend with apart from her duties as a surgeon. The young doctor must balance a romantic relationship with a resident; deftly overcome the barriers she encounters because of her skin color; and move beyond nightmarish memories of her childhood in the Congo. Kraus's story clips along at a fast pace, and his readers will appreciate how candidly the surgeon writer portrays the real world of operating rooms and their attending staffs.
