Oxygen

By Carol Cassella
(Simon & Schuster, Paperback, 9781416556114, 320pp.)

Publication Date: June 9, 2009

Other Editions of This Title: Compact Disc (April 2009), Large Print (November 2008), Hardcover (July 1, 2008)

Categories: General

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Selected by Indie Booksellers for the Fall '09/Winter '10 Reading Group List
“Dr. Marie Heaton, a successful anesthesiologist at a prominent Seattle hospital, must come to terms with an operating-room tragedy, including the fallout from the hospital, the patient's family, and her conscience. Cassella has written an absolutely honest emotional portrayal of a kind, strong, and dedicated woman caught up in a crisis of doubt and remorse. A provocative, intelligent, and beautifully faceted book.”
-- Tova Beiser, Brown University Bookstore, Providence, RI
Selected by Indie Booksellers for the July 2008 Indie Next List
“When Dr. Marie Heaton's judgment in a tragic case is questioned, she begins to doubt herself and, then, others around her. I thoroughly enjoyed the book -- full of action and suspense and rich in characterization and subplots -- from start to finish.”
-- Gayle Wingerter, Inklings Bookshop, Yakima, WA

Description

With the compassion of Jodi Picoult and the medical realism of Atul Gawande, Oxygen is a riveting new novel by a real-life anesthesiologist, an intimate story of relationships and family that collides with a high-stakes medical drama.

Dr. Marie Heaton is an anesthesiologist at the height of her profession. She has worked, lived and breathed her career since medical school, and she now practices at a top Seattle hospital. Marie has carefully constructed and constricted her life according to empirical truths, to the science and art of medicine. But when her tried-and-true formula suddenly deserts her during a routine surgery, she must explain the nightmarish operating room disaster and face the resulting malpractice suit. Marie's best friend, colleague and former lover, Dr. Joe Hillary, becomes her closest confidante as she twists through depositions, accusations and a remorseful preoccupation with the mother of the patient in question. As she struggles to salvage her career and reputation, Marie must face hard truths about the path she's chosen, the bridges she's burned and the colleagues and superiors she's mistaken for friends.

A quieter crisis is simultaneously unfolding within Marie's family. Her aging father is losing his sight and approaching an awkward dependency on Marie and her sister, Lori. But Lori has taken a more traditional path than Marie and is busy raising a family. Although Marie has been estranged from her Texas roots for decades, the ultimate responsibility for their father's care is falling on her.

As her carefully structured life begins to collapse, Marie confronts questions of love and betrayal, family bonds and the price of her own choices. Set against the natural splendor of Seattle, and inside the closed vaults of hospital operating rooms, Oxygen climaxes in a final twist that is as heartrending as it is redeeming.



About the Author

Carol Wiley Cassella majored in English Literature at Duke University and graduated from medical school in 1986. She currently practices anesthesiology in Seattle and is a freelance medical writer specializing in global public health advocacy for the developing world. She is the mother of two sets of twins and is working on her next novel. Visit the author at www.carolcassella.com.



Praise For Oxygen…

"In Oxygen, Carol Cassella's taut novel, Dr. Marie Heaton, an assured anesthesiologist at the top of her game, is forced to face the personal and professional fallout from an operating room disaster. Marie finds herself on the losing end of dollars-and-cents medicine in a malpractice suit, questioning herself, her skills, her colleagues, and her life choices. I couldn't wait to race to the end to see how her story played out, and I wasn't disappointed."-- Lalita Tademy, author of Cane River

"A subtle, compelling plot that twists and twists again. This quickly becomes a book you cannot put down." -- The Dallas Morning News

"A finely crafted mystery, as well as a sparkling literary work." -- THE DENVER POST

"Like her protagonist, Carol Cassella has the heart of a poet and the mind of a physician; the result is a striking meditation on the complexities of love, the fragile miracle that is the human body and the burdens and blessings of being a healer." -- Stephanie Kallos, author of Broken for You

"More than just an assured debut novel, this book is a tour de force, as emotionally involving as it is intelligent. Carol Cassella writes with the clarity and precision that are the hallmarks of her other profession....The fine, sharp details of her portrait of a gifted doctor facing a devastating crisis will stay with you long after the book is closed." -- Susan Wiggs, author of Fireside and Just Breathe

" A startling plot twist, combined with Cassella's first-hand understanding of our ailing healthcare system, makes this involving debut just what the doctor ordered." -- PEOPLE

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