Five Days At Memorial: Life And Death In A Storm-Ravaged Hospital

Five Days At Memorial: Life And Death In A Storm-Ravaged Hospital

Pulitzer Prize winner Sheri Fink?s landmark investigation of patient deaths at a New Orleans hospital ravaged by Hurricane Katrina-and her suspenseful portrayal of the quest for truth and justice.In the tradition of the best investigative journalism, physician and reporter Sheri Fink reconstructs 5 days at Memorial Medical Center and draws the reader into the lives of those who struggled mightily to survive and maintain life amid chaos.After Katrina struck and the floodwaters rose, the power failed, and the heat climbed, exhausted caregivers chose to designate certain patients last for rescue. Months later, several of those caregivers faced criminal allegations that they deliberately injected numerous patients with drugs to hasten their deaths. Five Days at Memorial, the culmination of six years of reporting, unspools the mystery of what happened in those days, bringing the reader into a hospital fighting for its life and into a conversation about the most terrifying form of health care rationing.In a voice at once involving and fair, masterful and intimate, Fink exposes the hidden dilemmas of end-of-life care and reveals just how ill-prepared we are for the impact of large-scale disasters-and how we can do better. A remarkable book, engrossing from start to finish, Five Days at Memorial radically transforms your understanding of human nature in crisis.One of Theew York Times' Best Ten Books of the YearReviewNew York Times BestsellerMSNBC's Morning Joe Book ClubWall Street Journal BestsellerNPR BestsellerNew York Times Book Review Editor's Choice"A" - Entertainment Weekly#1 September Book - Christian Science MonitorOne of USA Today's "Coolest Books" for FallOne of People magazine's "Great Reads" in New Nonfiction"What we have here is masterly reporting and the glow of fine writing.? -Sherwin B. Nuland, New York Times Book Review?Dr. Fink more than delivers. She writes with a seasoned sense of how doctors and nurses improvise in emergencies, and about the ethical realms in which they work. The first half of this book, which is well paced, covers the five days of the title. Then the viewfinder shifts to an entwined legal and political story in which state authorities pursue a homicide investigation. That so many people, starkly divided over the question of whether crimes had been committed, come off as decent and appealing makes this book an absorbing read. Dr. Fink brings a shimmering intelligence to its many narrative cul-de-sacs, which consider medical, legal and ethical issues?. By reporting the depth of those gruesome hours in Memorial before the helicopters came, and giving weight to medical ethics as grounded in the law, Sheri Fink has written an unforgettable story.Five Days at Memorial is social reporting of the first rank.? -Jason Berry, New York Times?The journalist and doctor Sheri Fink published a meticulous investigation of these deaths in theNew YorkTimes Magazine and on the Web site of ProPublica, in 2009. Her work won a Pulitzer Prize.?And now comes the book. In ?Five Days at Memorial,? the contours of the story remain the same, yet Fink imbues them with far more narrative richness, making the doctors seem both more sympathetic and more culpable. Fink also expands on the ethical conundrums, which have festered over time and seem to gain fresh urgency.? -?heNewYorker.com"A triumph of journalism...Fink re-creates this world with mastery and sensitivity, revealing the full humanity of each character. Unlike post-storm commentary that jumped to black and white conclusions, painting the doctors as heroes or villains, Fink?s narrative wades through the muck and finds only real people making tough choices under circumstances the rest of us, if we?re lucky, will never experience." -Houston Chronicle"Every page gives evidence of meticulous research, thousands of hours spent interviewing, prowling the halls at Memorial, reviewing legal documents and transcripts...[Fink]