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Summary
Summary
A captivating medical mystery wrapped in a contemporary love story--from a practicing MD whose novels are "just what the doctor ordered" ( People ).
A stranger's life hangs in the balance. What if you had the power to decide if she lives or dies?
Dr. Charlotte Reese works in the intensive care unit of Seattle's Beacon Hospital, tending to patients with the most life-threatening illnesses and injuries. Her job is to battle death--to monitor erratic heartbeats, worry over low oxygen levels, defend against infection and demise.
One night a Jane Doe is transferred to her care from a rural hospital on the Olympic Peninsula. This unidentified patient remains unconscious, the victim of a hit and run. As Charlotte and her team struggle to stabilize her, the police search for the driver who fled the scene.
Days pass, Jane's condition worsens, and her identity remains a mystery. As Charlotte finds herself making increasingly complicated medical decisions that will tie her forever to Jane's fate, her usual professional distance evaporates. She's plagued by questions: Who is Jane Doe? Why will no one claim her? Who should decide her fate if she doesn't regain consciousness--and when?
Perhaps most troubling, Charlotte wonders if a life locked in a coma is a life worth living.
Enlisting the help of her boyfriend, Eric, a science journalist, Charlotte impulsively sets out to uncover Jane Doe's past. But the closer they get to the truth, the more their relationship is put to the test. It is only when they open their hearts to their own feelings toward each other--and toward life itself--that Charlotte and Eric will unlock Jane Doe's shocking secret, and prepare themselves for a miracle.
Filled with intricate medical detail and set in the breathtaking Pacific Northwest, Gemini is a riveting and heartbreaking novel of moral complexity and emotional depth.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
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 [leap] into the next." Agent: David Forrer and Kimberly Witherspoon, Inkwell Management. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
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.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
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 Copyright 2014 Booklist
Library Journal Review
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 (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.