Overview

Daly Walker's Surgeon Stories is a book of the body, and the physician, particularly the surgeon, is the shaman of the body. For many of us, the physician-surgeon has been the body's personal champion and sometimes savior in the face of disease, accident, aging, human violence, and war. While most of these categories of threat are inevitably faced by all of us, war is the ultimate ogre, and its ravages dwarf and challenge even the most skilled physician. Himself both a surgeon and a Vietnam veteran, Daly Walker has created an artful collection that compels us to consider the power of war as it slices through both the body and the sense of self. His two bookend stories spotlight the failure of generation after generation to end wars, but they also illumine the ability of the shaman, while flawed like every human, to open wide the doors of compassion. If you like stories where the line between life and death is as thin as a surgeon's scalpel, then you'll love Daly Walker's meditative stories about the practice of medicine.

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9781951479459

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Reviews

This is among the best collections of stories I've encountered over the last decade or so fiercely dramatic, immaculately composed, and so moving that even the most hardened heart must tremble. Treat yourself to the great beauty of Surgeon Stories. -Tim O'Brien, author of The Things They Carried and July, July With an insider's view of the medical profession, Daly Walker writes engaging stories, which often reveal their doctor protagonists to be just as flawed and human as their patients. The result is an eye-opening collection of stories. -Billy Collins Riveting and beautiful! With this collection of linked stories about the lives of surgeons, Daly Walker joins the ranks of other great doctor-writers Anton Chekhov, William Carlos Williams, Walker Percy, Ethan Canin who understand the frailties of the human heart as well as they do the human body. His prose is as artful and precise as a surgeon's scalpel, and his skill is, more importantly, always in service of narratives that reveal not only his characters fierce, frequently ambivalent devotion to their medical vocations but also their rich, unsentimental, and deeply conflicted inner lives. -K.L. Cook, author of Last Call and Love Songs for the Quarantined Daly Walker has written a heartfelt book from deep experience. -Thomas McGuane, author of Driving on the Rim Crafted in language crisp and precise, Surgeon Stories delivers the kind of quiet tragedies that reaffirm the redemptive power of storytelling. -John Pipkin, author of Woodsburner

This is among the best collections of stories I've encountered over the last decade or so fiercely dramatic, immaculately composed, and so moving that even the most hardened heart must tremble. Treat yourself to the great beauty of Surgeon Stories. -Tim O'Brien, author of The Things They Carried and July, July With an insider's view of the medical profession, Daly Walker writes engaging stories, which often reveal their doctor protagonists to be just as flawed and human as their patients. The result is an eye-opening collection of stories. -Billy Collins Riveting and beautiful! With this collection of linked stories about the lives of surgeons, Daly Walker joins the ranks of other great doctor-writers Anton Chekhov, William Carlos Williams, Walker Percy, Ethan Canin who understand the frailties of the human heart as well as they do the human body. His prose is as artful and precise as a surgeon's scalpel, and his skill is, more importantly, always in service of narratives that reveal not only his characters fierce, frequently ambivalent devotion to their medical vocations but also their rich, unsentimental, and deeply conflicted inner lives. -K.L. Cook, author of Last Call and Love Songs for the Quarantined Daly Walker has written a heartfelt book from deep experience. -Thomas McGuane, author of Driving on the Rim Crafted in language crisp and precise, Surgeon Stories delivers the kind of quiet tragedies that reaffirm the redemptive power of storytelling. -John Pipkin, author of Woodsburner

Author Information

Daly Walker is a retired surgeon and a writer of literary fiction. He divides his time between Boca Grande, Florida and Quechee, Vermont. When in Vermont, he teaches a fiction writers' workshop for the Osher program at Dartmouth College.

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