In My Father's House
Books / Hardcover
ISBN: 0801843375 / Publisher: The Johns Hopkins University Press, September 1992
When the Chief of Neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital, Dr. Clayton Hallam, collapses in mid-sente...
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When the Chief of Neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital, Dr. Clayton Hallam, collapses in mid-sentence during his retirement ceremony, preliminary evidence points to a stroke. But Jim Gallier, an intern about to be assigned as Dr. Hallam's physician, will soon arrive at a different diagnosis. The encounter changes the lives of both men, as the young doctor who secretly doubts his fitness for medicine comes to know the eminent surgeon whose brilliant professional successes mask deep personal failings.In My Father's House is the story behind one man's rise to the top of his profession at one of the world's leading medical institutions. As a patient in the hospital he once helped administer, Dr. Hallam looks back on a life rich in professional accomplishment and personal tragedy. The story he recalls - and relates, in part, to the young doctor who knew him first as a paragon and now as a patient - takes Clay Hallam from Johns Hopkins Medical School in the 1930s to a military field hospital in Burma during World War II, from an exclusive private clinic serving Richmond's social elite to the execution cell of a Saudi prison in the hands of Islamic fundamentalists.Reliving these distant events raises questions Dr. Hallam finds himself still unable to answer - or even to confront. Who really wrote the anonymous letter that nearly ended his marriage and career? What secret lies behind the puzzling symptoms that accompanied his apparent stroke? Why did his surgical skills permit him to save the only man he ever wished to kill - and fail him when he needed them most desperately?Dr. Hallam's gradual recovery is a process of healing not only for himself but also for his wife and daughter, each of whom has paid a price for his outward success. It also brings forgiveness, for others as well as for himself, and a new understanding of what defines a successful life. And when Jim Gallier must finally decide whether to leave his career in medicine, only Clayton Hallam knows why he should not - and why he can never be told.
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