Bøker av Kate Scannell

A MYSTERIOUS BLUE PATIENT IS ABANDONED AT OAKLAND CITY HOSPITAL. Doctor Nora Kelly must outwit a powerful corporate adversary to diagnose her patient's illness and safeguard her community.¿An anonymous blue patient is abandoned at the doorstep of Oakland City Hospital and cries out for her young daughter before passing out. Doctor Nora Kelly must struggle against the clock to diagnose her patient's life-threatening illness and mysterious discoloration. The task becomes more difficult when the patient awakens but refuses to speak with anyone on staff, fearing reprisals from immigration and child-protection authorities.Nora suspects that her patient's illness is caused by exposure to toxic chemicals, and she worries that others in the community may be endangered as well. But the patient remains silent. Only after learning that Nora saved her life does she agree to answer Nora's burning questions-still, for a price. In return, Nora must deliver a confidential message to her daughter.Nora's end of that bargain is the beginning of a perilous journey that leads to a homeless encampment at a decrepit local stadium site. With the help of her colleagues, she desperately searches for the daughter as she also discovers that other encampment residents have succumbed to toxic exposures. Her insistent attempts to prove the site's environmental contamination come up against powerful systemic forces and trigger dangerous personal consequences. Editorial Reviews"Scannell lifts the veil on the life-and-death struggles taking place both inside and around the edges of an urban hospital. A fast-paced drama of overlapping lives, conflicting emotions, and the threats posed by immigration, human trafficking, and environmental degradation." -Leslie Larson, author of Breaking Out of Bedlam~~~¿"With Lethal Control, Kate Scannell crafts a mystery threaded with social activism and environmental justice. In present-day Oakland, California, Nora Kelly is a doctor in a community hospital. When a number of desperately ill homeless people are brought into her care, Kelly is pulled into a web of intrigue surrounding the redevelopment of a local stadium site where her patients camp.With the aid of her colleagues, Kelly investigates the site's potential contamination. As the novel races toward its conclusion, she uncovers a decades-old conspiracy that interweaves many of Oakland's most pressing social problems, including homelessness, environmental racism and gentrification. Scannell excels at characterization, bringing a vibrancy to individuals from a wide range of backgrounds, from debutantes to homeless individuals... The plot is taut and engaging... Scannell's authorial gaze is remarkably compassionate, especially to those who have been discarded by society at large. In addition to being an intriguing mystery, the novel is a cry for social activism..." -BlueInk Review~~~Clarion Rating: 4 out of 5 Lethal Control is a physician-led mystery with a strong social message...This series title includes characters from a previous volume; their introductions here are light, but their personalities are still made apparent... And the book's mystery elements are punctuated with scenes of medical drama...These varying stories connect in the high-energy resolution, in which Nora's fears-and her willingness to push through them-are validated... -Foreword Clarion Reviews

The floodwaters keep rising, the torrential rains continue, and suddenly your life and home are thrust onto flood stage. How do you react to the peril? Do you stay or flee? What do you choose to carry away, and what do you hope to leave behind?Ferocious rains pummel Thalburg Canyon and overfill the Baptista River that runs through a tight-knit rural community in Northern California. When flooding ensues, canyon residents are forced to make life-altering decisions, and their interconnected stories are acted out on center stage. A paralyzed woman, exhausted by her life, plans an opportune death in the flood. The local real estate agent is shocked to discover beauty in the canyon's demise. Couples drift together or apart over old affairs and insurance coverage mistakes. A man burdened by a toxic secret struggles for atonement as the flood encroaches upon his final opportunity for redemption.These and other stories portray a series of unique personal histories caught up in a universal human drama.REVIEWS"Touching and poignant, Flood Stage is a fine novel that shouldn't be missed. " -Midwest Book Review"Kate Scannell brings to life the diverse characters in Flood Stage in a way that allowed me to inhabit their hearts and minds. ... I read the book in two evenings and now come back to it to savor its many insights. " -Lance ReynoldsACCLAIM FOR THE AUTHOR'S MEMOIR, Death of the Good Doctor: Lessons from the Heart of the AIDS Epidemic"This haunting memoir is an important addition to the canon of AIDS literature. Scannell writes beautifully and with an insight that escapes most physicians."-Abraham Verghese, author of My Own Country and Cutting for Stone"Kate Scannell is the rare doctor who has been transformed by her patients. In this irresistible, informative, and enormously moving book, she tells us not only her own story, but theirs."-Gloria Steinem" ... an enormously moving, thoughtful and compassionate memoir. "-Minneapolis Star-TribuneACCLAIM FOR Immortal Wounds: A Doctor Nora Kelly Mystery"Immortal Wounds is a compelling, richly textured mystery that draws us deeply into the cloistered world of the hospital. A murderer or two may be on the loose in Scannell's thriller, but the psychological struggles and ethical mysteries encountered daily by her doctors and nurses prove just as riveting. A must-read! "-Jodi Halpern, MD, author of From Detached Concern to Empathy: Humanizing Medical Practice

A doctor, struggling to recover from a devastating family trauma, is drawn back into her life during a perilous quest to solve the mystery of multiple deaths among the staff at Oakland City Hospital.It's a normal workday for Dr. Nora Kelly-as normal as it can be after the traumatic loss of her family two years ago. She steps into the ER at Oakland City Hospital, wrestling with grief and self-doubt about her ability to continue practicing medicine. Early retirement increasingly appeals.But there's a corpse in the hospital's business office and more to follow as havoc begins to descend on Nora and her colleagues. The mystery behind the mayhem draws Nora back into life and work, her once-renowned diagnostic acumen resurrected under extreme peril. At the same time, her self-redemptive quest to solve the mystery unearths a deeply personal and painful question-one that reaches into the core of who she is and what she believes.FROM THE BACK COVER"Immortal Wounds is a compelling, richly textured mystery that draws us deeply into the cloistered world of the hospital. A murderer or two may be on the loose in Scannell's thriller, but the psychological struggles and ethical mysteries encountered daily by her doctors and nurses prove just as riveting. A must-read!"- Jodi Halpern, MD, author of From Detached Concern to Empathy: Humanizing Medical PracticeACCLAIM FOR Death of the Good Doctor: Lessons from the Heart of the AIDS Epidemic"This haunting memoir is an important addition to the canon of AIDS literature. Scannell writes beautifully and with an insight that escapes most physicians."- Abraham Verghese, author of My Own Country and Cutting for Stone"Kate Scannell is the rare doctor who has been transformed by her patients. In this irresistible, informative, and enormously moving book, she tells us not only her own story, but theirs."- Gloria Steinem"A remarkable book, part history, part memoir, that reads with the grace and eloquence of good fiction."- Bay Area Reporter"... an enormously moving, thoughtful and compassionate memoir."- Minneapolis Star-TribuneACCLAIM FOR Flood Stage-A Novel"Touching and poignant, Flood Stage is a fine novel that shouldn't be missed."- Midwest Book Review"Kate Scannell brings to life the diverse characters in Flood Stage in a way that allowed me to inhabit their hearts and minds. … It has enriched my life and I believe it will enrich yours."- M. Lance Reynolds

Kate Scannell abandoned her academic career in 1985 expecting to enter an "ordinary" medical practice in Northern California. Instead, the thirty-two-year-old physician found herself assigned to an Alameda county hospital's AIDS ward where much of the medicine she had studied over many difficult years was rendered irrelevant.Working with AIDS patients, nearly all of whom were dying, Scannell discovered the inadequacy of the "good doctor" who battles illness to keep patients alive regardless of their suffering. By embracing her patients' unique needs and stories, Scannell reached an expanded understanding of her patients and of herself as a physician.Death of the Good Doctor richly chronicles the intimacy of Scannell's relationships with her patients through whom the vast complexities of the AIDS epidemic are uniquely focused. It is through these beautiful, often difficult, and sometimes humorous portraits that the woman and the physician discover each other.From the Back Cover"This haunting memoir is an important addition to the canon of AIDS literature. Scannell writes beautifully and with an insight that escapes most physicians."-Abraham Verghese, author of My Own Country and Cutting for Stone"Kate Scannell is the rare doctor who has been transformed by her patients. In this irresistible, informative, and enormously moving book, she tells us not only her own story, but theirs."-Gloria Steinem