A review by jereco1962
My Own Country: A Doctor's Story by Abraham Verghese

5.0

Such a lovely, heart-wrenching book. Verghese, physician and author (I'd have to hate him for being successful in two such different realms, but as this book shows: he's a lovely person, so...I can't), has given us a marvelous gift with this memoir of the early AIDS years. He was in a unique situation in which to observe the ravages of this disease - physically, of course, but emotionally and socially, as well. An outsider himself, he had an immediate connection with his patients, all of whom were - or became - outsiders. Some, due to being gay in rural Tennessee; others, because they had contracted the disease through tainted blood/plasma supplies, because they had a disease the world associated with only risky behaviors: as if they brought this upon themselves. The author tried to keep a clinical distance, but being a sensitive human being at the height of a horrifying plague, it was impossible for him to do so. To the benefit of his patients, and now to ours, as well.