Doctor Confidential: Secrets Behind the Veil by Richard Shef

ARC

This review was written for LibraryThing Early Reviewers.

Doctor Confidential: Secrets Behind the Wall by Richard Sheff, M.D. offers readers an opportunity to vicariously share in the experiences of a medical student in training.

Dr. Sheff shows the emotional wounds that doctors garner through the highly pressured years of their medical school education. In order to survive student doctors are forced to build up emotional walls by the time they walk out with a degree. In reality these doctors have become wounded healers.

Not until the reader is deep into the book, does it become apparent just how much Dr. Sheff suffered personally by witnessing medical treatments done wrong, horribly callous doctors, and by the mistakes that Sheff himself had made.

I am a lupus patient with years of perpetual doctor visits and treatments. Some of the book reignited my own emotional pain from the suffering I had experienced by rigid insensitive doctors. And in turn, I found an even deeper gratitude for my doctors who are truly gifted healers.

Dr. Sheff points out that it is not necessarily the medical treatment that helps the healing, but that healing happens within the relationship between doctor and patient.

I found this to be an engaging read that would most likely appeal to a young adult audience that is interested in a career in medicine.


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3 out of 5 stars


Doctor Confidential: Secrets Behind the Veil available at our bookstore!


LEARN MORE about the Author at: ricksheffmd.com

A Life On the Road by Charles Kurault

We need more journalists like Charles Kuralt. Engaging, professional and an outstanding storyteller, Kuralt left me reminiscent for the days when television news reporting was actual journalism and where good news could still nab the undivided attention of American viewers. 


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A LIFE ON THE ROAD available at You Are What You Read Bookstore

Waltzing with the Enemy by Rasia Kliot & Helen Mitsios

Waltzing With the Enemy: A Mother and Daughter Confront the Aftermath of the Holocaust

ARC Review

This book is a dual memoir written by a mother, Raisa Kliot, and her daughter, Helen Mitsios.

Raisa Kliot was an Eastern European Jewish woman who survived the Holocaust by hiding often times in plain sight, thus the title "Waltzing with the Enemy".

Raisa's story is unlike the published memoirs that I have read thus far about Jewish survivors. She was seventeen when the Nazis invaded her family home and sent her family to the Vilnius ghetto. Raisa's bold survival was definitely due to the feeling of invulnerability and survival drive of the young. An older person probably would not have survived Raisa's journey.

Raisa tells her story in a clear compelling voice without any sentimentality. Her story is a page turner and for that I give Raisa's story 5 stars.

The trouble with the book enters in the second half; Helen Mitsios' sharing her own story of growing up not knowing anything of her mother Raisa's history.

Helen Mitsios' story had the potential to be as compelling as Raisa's, but the writing lacked the clear sighted through line to keep the reader moving.

Helen's story is scattered with what appear to be random details that cause distraction instead of adding depth to her recollections.

When someone is so close to the story, it might have been prudent to have added a biographer into the writing team.

I was quite sorry to see this because Waltzing with the Enemy is a valuable contribution to the voices of Jewish survivors of the Holocaust. Especially of those like Raisa who had to create a new identity and felt compelled to continue that false identity even after decades of life in safety.

So the book in total; is rated 3 out of 5 stars simply for the fact that the second half of the book diverges so far from the quality of Raisa's story. 

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Waltzing with the Enemy on sale now at You Are What You Read Bookstore

Video: Waltzing with the Enemy narrated by Helen Mitsios