White Hot Light, Frank Huyler
White Hot Light, Frank Huyler
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White Hot Light
Twenty-Five Years in Emergency Medicine

Author: Frank Huyler

Narrator: Gary Bennett

Unabridged: 6 hr 4 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: HarperAudio

Published: 08/25/2020


Synopsis

Another “pitch-perfect book of short essays” (New York Times Book Review) from the acclaimed author of Blood of Strangers, this one exploring the contemporary practice of medicine from the perspective of a doctor with 25 years of experience in the ER.

In the late 1990s, a young physician in Albuquerque, New Mexico, published a stunning memoir of his experiences in the highly charged world of the ER. Presented in a series of powerful, poetic vignettes, The Blood of Strangers became an instant classic. Now, over two decades later, Dr. Frank Huyler delivers another dispatch from the trenches—this time from the perspective of middle age. In portraits visceral, haunting, sometimes surreal, Huyler reveals the gritty reality of medicine practiced on the razor’s edge between life and death. From the doomed, like the Iraq vet with a brain full of shrapnel, to the self-destructive, like the young woman who inserts a sewing needle into her heart, to the transcendent, like the homeless Navajo artist whose sketches charm the nurses, Huyler assembles a profound mosaic of human suffering and grace, complemented by episodes from his personal life: the hail that fell the night his wife gave birth, his drive through a snowstorm to see his father in a Colorado ER, the beautiful wedding of his childhood friend with terminal cancer. Melding hard-earned wisdom with a poet’s crystalline vision, Huyler evokes the awesome burden of responsibility, the exhaustion, the relief of a costume disco nurse party, and those rare occasions when the confluence of luck and science yield, in the author’s words, “moments of breathtaking greatness.”  White Hot Light offers an unforgettable portrait of a field that illuminates society at its most vulnerable, and its most elemental.

About Frank Huyler

Frank Huyler is an emergency physician in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and the author of the The Blood of Strangers, The Laws of Invisible Things, and Right of Thirst. His poetry has appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, The Georgia Review, and Poetry, among others.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Jennifer ~ TarHeelReader on October 14, 2020

Due to his success with The Blood of Strangers, I just had to read White Hot Light, Dr. Frank Huyler’s memoir looking back on his career in ER medicine after over two decades in the trenches. I didn’t watch the show ER until it was in re-runs, but I LOVED it. Same with Grey’s in its early years. Well......more

Goodreads review by Nina (ninjasbooks) on February 19, 2024

Interesting topic, but I didn’t like how the stories were organized. There was a lot of jumping from one memory to the next, so fast that I was still contemplating what I’ve just heard. A little more reflection and context would have helped.......more

Goodreads review by Testy on October 19, 2020

In the late 1990s, a young physician in Albuquerque, New Mexico, published a stunning memoir of his experiences in the highly charged world of the ER. Presented in a series of powerful, poetic vignettes, The Blood of Strangers became an instant classic. Now, over two decades later, Dr. Frank Huyler d......more

Goodreads review by Sydney on August 21, 2020

I’ve always been fascinated by the medical field and I recommend this book to anyone who wonders what exactly goes on in an emergency room. With 25 years of experience, Dr. Frank Huyler has countless stories to tell, both amusing and heartbreaking, that vary in all aspects (age, injury, severity, et......more