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Gemini: A Novel
Author:
Cassella, Carol Wiley
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Class:
Fiction
Age: Adult
Language: English
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LC: PS3603.A
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ISBN-13: 9781451627930
LCCN: 2013027386
Imprint: Simon & Schuster
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Pub Date: 03/04/2014
Availability: Out of Stock Indefinitely
List: $25.99
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Hardcover
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Physical Description:
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341 pages ; 24 cm
H 9",
W 6",
D 1.2",
1.13 lbs.
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LC Series:
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Brodart Sources:
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Brodart's Insight Catalog: Adult
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Bibliographies:
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Awards:
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Library Journal Starred Reviews
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Starred Reviews:
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Library Journal
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TIPS Subjects:
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Medical Fiction
Mystery/Detective Fiction
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BISAC Subjects: |
FICTION / General
FICTION / Literary
FICTION / Medical
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LC Subjects:
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FICTION / General
FICTION / Literary
FICTION / Medical
Love stories
Medical fiction
Mystery fiction
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SEARS Subjects: |
Love stories
Medical novels
Mystery fiction
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Reading Programs: |
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| Annotations |
| Publisher Annotations | 12/03/2013 |
| A captivating medical mystery wrapped in a contemporary love story-from a practicing MD whose novels are "just what the doctor ordered" ('People'). Across the Puget Sound in a rural hospital on the Olympic Peninsula an unidentified patient lies unconscious, the victim of a hit and run. In Seattle, ICU doctor Charlotte Reese receives a call: Jane Doe will be transferred to her care. But when the patient arrives-with only tubes keeping her alive-Charlotte has to dig through x-rays and MRIs to determine what went wrong on the operating table. Jane Doe's condition is getting worse each day, and Charlotte finds herself becoming increasingly consumed by her patient's plight-both medical and personal. Who is this woman? Why will no one claim her? Who should decide her fate if she never regains consciousness? As a doctor and a woman, Charlotte is forced to confront these issues head on-especially when her boyfriend Eric, a science journalist, becomes involved in the case. But the closer Charlotte and Eric get to the truth, the more their relationship is put to the test. The key to unlocking Jane Doe's secret is opening their hearts to their own feelings about life and death, love and marriage...and each other. Filled with intricate medical detail and set in the breathtaking Pacific Northwest, 'Gemini' is a vivid novel of moral complexity and emotional depth from the bestselling author of 'Oxygen' and 'Healer.' |
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| Starred Reviews: |
| Library Journal | 02/01/2014 |
| Intensive care doctor Charlotte Reese is on duty in Seattle's Beacon Hospital when a hit-and-run victim, a middle-aged woman, is delivered by helicopter from Olympia Island. Charlotte expertly assesses the unconscious woman's injuries, which include a very broken body and high probability of brain damage. After stabilizing the patient, Charlotte attempts to address the multiple injuries in an effort to keep this Jane Doe alive until either she can speak for herself or some next of kin appears to identify her. Meanwhile, in Charlotte's personal life, her boyfriend Eric, a science reporter, clearly adores Charlotte but inexplicably appears unable to take their relationship forward to commitment and parenthood. Alternating chapters chronicle Charlotte's life and the story of a country girl named Raney, who falls in love with a city boy named Bo. The book prompts many questions: Who is Jane Doe? Why has no one come forward to identify her? How long can Charlotte keep this patient alive before an appointed guardian decides that it would be in the woman's best interests to let her die? How do the stories of Charlotte and Raney intersect? VERDICT Informed by her work as a doctor, Casella's third medical novel (after Oxygen and Healer) poses interesting medical questions and offers deepening mysteries to keep the reader turning the pages. [See Prepub Alert, 9/16/13.]. Sheila M. Riley, Smithsonian Inst. Libs., Washington, DC. 352p. LIBRARY JOURNAL, c2014. |
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| Journal Reviews |
| BookPage | 03/01/2014 |
| If you're very observant and know a little something about the wilder shores of human genetics, then you may be able to figure out the big mystery of Carol Cassella's new novel by, oh, page 260 or so. Oh yes, the title also gives one a hint as to what's going on with one of the book's well-drawn characters. But we should start at the beginning. Gemini concerns a dedicated and humane doctor, Charlotte Reese, who comes to be the physician for an anonymous woman who is medevaced in from an impoverished Washington town to Dr. Reese's Seattle hospital in the middle of the night. The Jane Doe is apparently a hit-and-run victim. Conscious when she was first found lying in a ditch by a road, she slips into a coma on the operating table after a fat embolism breaks loose from one of her broken bones and lodges in her brain. Part of the story concerns Charlotte's struggle over whether to keep Jane Doe alive, or to let her pass on with some kind of dignity. The other part of the story has to do with Charlotte's boyfriend of three years, a writer who's working on a book about genetics. He's one of the folks in this book whose DNA doesn't work the way it should. Having inherited neurofibromatosis, as a child he was subject to seizures and later developed benign brain tumors--yes, more than one. Charlotte, who's desperate to have a child, doesn't know if Eric's a good prospect for fatherhood, as the risk of him passing down his affliction is almost a certainty. But there's still the problem of Jane Doe. Surely, with the whole world interconnected, she must have family; she must have someone who misses her. Cleverly but incrementally, Cassella--a practicing physician as well as an author--puts together the pieces of Jane Doe's mystery even as she ponders, through Charlotte, the Big Questions. What is life, anyway? Is it simply one's genetics? Does it have a purpose? What's the best way to find love, happiness, peace? Is Jane Doe still in there somewhere, in her ruined, swollen, already decaying body? As for the mystery's solution: It explains much, but that's all you'll learn from this review!. Arlene McKanic. 352pg. BOOKPAGE, c2014. |
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| Booklist | 02/01/2014 |
| The third outing by the author of Oxygen (2008) and Healer (2010) is a compelling look at the collision of a physician's professional and personal lives. Charlotte Reese takes an immediate interest in a seriously injured Jane Doe who shows up one night in the Seattle ICU where she works. The victim of an apparent hit-and-run, Jane Doe is in critical condition, and Charlotte must work hard to keep her alive even as she wonders if the damage to Jane's brain will make her efforts futile. Cassella alternates between Charlotte's story and that of Raney, whose childhood in the small Washington town of Quentin was shaped by her friendship with Bo, a thoughtful boy who worked his way into Raney's life and eventually her heart despite the vast differences in their families' social standings. A devastating medical condition ripped Bo from Raney's arms. Readers will quickly perceive the connection between Raney and the Jane Doe in Charlotte's ICU, but they'll be surprised to discover that the women share another link. A uniquely involving read. Huntley, Kristine. 352pg. AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION, c2014. |
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| Kirkus Reviews | 02/01/2014 |
| In a new mystery from Cassella (Healer, 2010, etc.), the lives of a doctor and her critically injured patient intertwine in unexpected ways. When the unconscious patient is brought into Dr. Charlotte's intensive care unit, very few facts are known. The apparent victim of a hit-and-run along a rural Washington road, "Jane Doe" lapsed into a coma after emergency surgery and was airlifted to Charlotte's hospital in Seattle. No family member has come forward to identify or make decisions for this Jane, and the police have no clues. Meanwhile, other characters take up the narrative in alternating chapters. Raney tells the story of her teenage friendship in the small town of Quentin, Wash., with Bo, a rich Seattleite whose parents have offloaded him with an aunt while they divorce. Eric, Dr. Charlotte's new boyfriend, has, after a long apprenticeship, become a recognized author of upmarket science books; he's currently contracted to write about in vitro fertilization. The stories of the three narrators intersect, as do the issues Cassella starkly delineates: the impact of poverty and class on health care choices, particularly when children are involved. Raney has a young son, Jake, who may or may not be Eric's child, and Jake too suffers from a congenital neurological condition, in his case, undiagnosed and untreated. Despite the potential ruination of her own future with Eric, Dr. Charlotte embarks on a determined quest to solve the puzzle of how this Jane Doe found herself in her present condition. Readers may well overlook Cassella's frequently interjected bromides about love ("Is it a room inside your soul that opens when your lover enters?") since this engaging medical mystery makes far more compelling points about economics and sociology. 352pg. KIRKUS MEDIA LLC, c2014. |
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| Library Journal Prepub Alert | 09/16/2013 |
| After making her name with Oxygen and Healer, Cassella smartly returns with another medical mystery. Seattle-based ICU doctor Charlotte Reese is perplexed by an unidentified hit-and-run victim brought to her from the Olympic Peninsula. She's rapidly deteriorating, and no one has stepped up to claim her, so for Charlotte it gets personal. 352p. LJ Prepub Alert Online Review. LIBRARY JOURNAL, c2013. |
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| Publishers Weekly | 01/06/2014 |
| Love must endure both distance and death in the third novel from the author of Oxygen and Healer. An intensive-care doctor in Seattle grappling with her stagnant relationship and ticking biological clock, Charlotte Reese becomes engrossed in the case of a Jane Doe delivered to her hospital comatose after a highway hit-and-run. After no one comes to the hospital looking for the new patient, Charlotte take a special interest in the case, and with the help of her boyfriend, Eric Bryson, begins to dig into Jane Doe's past. What she comes up with forces her to confront decisions both professional and personal. In chapters that alternate with those telling Charlotte's story, readers learn about Jane Doe, who is a tough-talking farm girl named Raney, and her first love. In Cassella's medical-drama-meets-love-story, the inevitability of death is paramount: Charlotte sees her job as "an interminable battle against the will of the universe," Raney's eccentric survivalist grandfather builds a bunker to prepare for TEOTWAWKI (The End Of The World As We Know It), and time is shown as "a grinding mudslide, shoving everything and everyone onward." A book at turns heartwarming and heartbreaking, it invites us to accept, if nothing else, that the only way to live is to "cling to every moment even as you into the next." Agent: David Forrer and Kimberly Witherspoon, Inkwell Management. (Mar.). 352p. PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, c2014. |
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