A review by theellabelle
Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital by Sheri Fink

5.0

An outstanding and deeply disturbing work of journalism, Five Days at Memorial author Sheri Fink has created a stunning and heart wrenching piece of narrative non-fiction that is both impossible to put down and hard to bear reading. The first half of the book is give to recreating the traumatic and desperate atmosphere inside Memorial Medical Center as the flood waters of Katrina rose and to giving the reader a sense of the confusion and challenging choices that staff faced within the sweltering walls. In the second half of the book, Fink moves to closely following the trials of those doctors and nurses accused of euthanizing some of the most critically ill patients during the final hours. Never does Fink point fingers or guide readers to a specific opinion, continually challenging us to consider for ourselves the complex realities of end of life care even in the best of circumstances and opening the question of what we can do better to prepare for the eventual promise of natural and manmade disasters. An exquisite, thought provoking, and intense read. Highly recommended.