[Since Harry Kraus's book The Six-Liter Club has recently released, I thought I'd repost my review that I posted back in October.]
The Book:
Taken from the back cover...
"In 1983, Dr. Camille Weller is the first black woman to attain the status of attending staff at Medical College of Virginia. She is gritty, assertive, and used to excelling over her male colleagues. A trauma surgeon, Camille enters the prestigious Six-Liter Club on her first day on the job. A sparsely populated "club", the Six-Liter Club is a group of surgeons who have managed to save a patient who sheds an overwhelming six liters of blood.
Given her groundbreaking status, work is challenging enough for Camille, but her private life is even more complicated. Born in Africa and orphaned as a young child, Camille was raised by a white aunt in the South. She is troubled by flashbacks from her youth growing up in the Congo as a child of an American missionary and a Congolese mother.
The Six-Liter Club is an intense and moving story of a young black woman in a time when women and minorities were moving into terrain dominated by men."
The Author:
Harry Kraus, M.D., is a bestselling author and board-certified surgeon whose contemporary fiction (beginning with 1994's Stainless Steal Hearts and including his 2001 best-seller Could I Have This Dance?) is characterized by medical realism. He practices surgery in Virginia and formerly in Kenya where he served as a missionary surgeon. He is also the author of two works of nonfiction. You can visit his website HERE.
My Thoughts/Review:
If you like "edgy" Christian fiction then The Six-Liter Club is the book for you. Harry Kraus pushed this book right past the so-called "boundaries" of what's expected in the genre and I loved every bit of it.
Now, I have to be honest and tell you that some of the medical terminology was a bit much for me (I honestly didn't understand some of it at first) but it wasn't anything that kept me from enjoying the book. And since this book was written by a surgeon about a surgeon if it didn't have the medical terminology it probably wouldn't have had the authenticity that it does. That being said...
Camille Weller was a wonderful character that I could empathize with. She's a woman trying to make her way in a man's world and still hold on to herself. Or at least the self that she knows. She also struggles with unanswered questions and unexplainable fears from her past. AND she's trying to balance all of that with finding love and faith.
Harry Kraus did a great job of telling her story and I thank him for providing me with an advanced copy and giving me the opportunity to review this book.
You can order a copy of it HERE.
Taken from the back cover...
"In 1983, Dr. Camille Weller is the first black woman to attain the status of attending staff at Medical College of Virginia. She is gritty, assertive, and used to excelling over her male colleagues. A trauma surgeon, Camille enters the prestigious Six-Liter Club on her first day on the job. A sparsely populated "club", the Six-Liter Club is a group of surgeons who have managed to save a patient who sheds an overwhelming six liters of blood.
Given her groundbreaking status, work is challenging enough for Camille, but her private life is even more complicated. Born in Africa and orphaned as a young child, Camille was raised by a white aunt in the South. She is troubled by flashbacks from her youth growing up in the Congo as a child of an American missionary and a Congolese mother.
The Six-Liter Club is an intense and moving story of a young black woman in a time when women and minorities were moving into terrain dominated by men."
The Author:
Harry Kraus, M.D., is a bestselling author and board-certified surgeon whose contemporary fiction (beginning with 1994's Stainless Steal Hearts and including his 2001 best-seller Could I Have This Dance?) is characterized by medical realism. He practices surgery in Virginia and formerly in Kenya where he served as a missionary surgeon. He is also the author of two works of nonfiction. You can visit his website HERE.
My Thoughts/Review:
If you like "edgy" Christian fiction then The Six-Liter Club is the book for you. Harry Kraus pushed this book right past the so-called "boundaries" of what's expected in the genre and I loved every bit of it.
Now, I have to be honest and tell you that some of the medical terminology was a bit much for me (I honestly didn't understand some of it at first) but it wasn't anything that kept me from enjoying the book. And since this book was written by a surgeon about a surgeon if it didn't have the medical terminology it probably wouldn't have had the authenticity that it does. That being said...
Camille Weller was a wonderful character that I could empathize with. She's a woman trying to make her way in a man's world and still hold on to herself. Or at least the self that she knows. She also struggles with unanswered questions and unexplainable fears from her past. AND she's trying to balance all of that with finding love and faith.
Harry Kraus did a great job of telling her story and I thank him for providing me with an advanced copy and giving me the opportunity to review this book.
You can order a copy of it HERE.
2 comments:
Delia, thanks for your blog post! I had the first idea for "The Six-Liter Club" one Sunday morning when my pastor told a story about some missionaries who barely escaped death in the Congo....I started thinking...what if?
You called it "edgy." I suppose that's a good word for it. The story is told through the eyes of a non-christian and so her life is definitely in need of redemption! That made the book a hard sell. The ABA (American Booksellers Association) publishers found it "too Christian." The CBA (Christian Booksellers Association) publishers found it too "edgy." Finally, after two years, my agent found it a home!
Concerning the medical terminology, I can't apologize for that...my commitment is to give the reader an authentic look into the lives of people inside medicine.
Again, thanks!
I agree that the medical terminology gave the book a certain authenticity that it wouldn't have had without it. I only meant that it was more than I knew. That's a good thing though, since I'm not in the medical field. :)
The Six-Liter Club is a great book, Harry, and I sure it will resonate with many people. I wish you much success with it.
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