Cutting For Stone by Abraham Verghese – 451 pages

Book Blurb:

A sweeping, emotionally riveting first novel—an enthralling family saga of Africa and America, doctors and patients, exile and home.
Marion and Shiva Stone are twin brothers born of a secret union between a beautiful Indian nun and a brash British surgeon at a mission hospital in Addis Ababa. Orphaned by their mother’s death in childbirth and their father’s disappearance, bound together by a preternatural connection and a shared fascination with medicine, the twins come of age as Ethiopia hovers on the brink of revolution. Yet it will be love, not politics—their passion for the same woman—that will tear them apart and force Marion, fresh out of medical school, to flee his homeland. He makes his way to America, finding refuge in his work as an intern at an underfunded, overcrowded New York City hospital. When the past catches up to him—nearly destroying him—Marion must entrust his life to the two men he thought he trusted least in the world: the surgeon father who abandoned him and the brother who betrayed him.
An unforgettable journey into one man’s remarkable life, and an epic story about the power, intimacy, and curious beauty of the work of healing others.

My Review: 4.5 stars

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If there was a Missing Hospital, I felt it, breathed it and lived it. This story comes to life beautifully as do the twin brothers and their family saga. This story takes on an ideal meaning of family, and the line from page 351, “not only our actions, but also our omissions, become our destiny,” is heralded throughout the book. Detailed medical procedures were interesting to read about especially with some of the limited resources they had at this mission hospital. Adoption, secrets, fatherhood, twins, young love, life and death are woven through this detailed coming of age story.

Quotes I liked:

You live it forward, but understand it backward.”

-“Wasn’t that the definition of home? Not where you are from, but where you are wanted”

-“We are all fixing what is broken. It is the task of a lifetime. We’ll leave much unfinished for the next generation.”

 

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