Description: "When Frank Huyler was just starting out in the medical profession in the late 1990s, he published a collection of medical vignettes detailing his encounters in the highly charged world of an emergency room. The Blood of Strangers became an instant classic, praised for Huyler's poetic prose and his ability to probe beneath the surface of his patient encounters-revealing the hard truths of life in the medical field. Now, over twenty years later, Huyler delivers another dispatch from the emergency room trenches, this time from the perspective of the middle of his medical career. With years passed and experience gained, Huyler is able to offer a fuller and more nuanced portrait of what remains an astonishing, affirming, yet increasingly difficult and rapidly changing profession. White Hot Light offers-with narrative power and haunting prose-and unforgettable portrait of a field that illuminates society and its values at its most vulnerable"--
Brief description:
Frank Huyler is an emergency physician in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and the author of the The Blood of Strangers, The Laws of Invisible Things, and Right of Thirst. His poetry has appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, The Georgia Review, and Poetry, among others.
Review Quotes:
"Huyler, an ER doctor who began as a poet, is a writer who makes every word count.... In terse, riveting vignettes, Huyler confronts us with enigmas, images and ironies often memorably welded together. The work of a now veteran ER physician, White Hot Light offers added authority ("The Gun Show" should be required reading for every American) - and also wisdom, as Huyler turns his cool gaze not only outward but also inward." - Rachel Hadas, TLS Books of the Year
"Frank Huyler's two collections of short personal pieces documenting his life in the ER--The Blood of Strangers and White Hot Light--are both masterpieces in my opinion, at once so powerful and so beautiful that I rank him as one of the finest writer-doctors since Chekov." - Paul Auster
"Haunting...instantly grabs readers' attention....Huyler's compassionate perspective and gripping stories result in a memorable account of the life he leads and the patients he sees, and sometimes saves." - Publishers Weekly, starred review
"Tales from the emergency room, told with no-nonsense brevity, clarity, and compassion. In this long-awaited follow-up to The Blood of Strangers, Huyler returns with more interesting, largely stand-alone stories from his work in an ER in Albuquerque.... The title aptly describes the illumination Huyler brings to patient care--and to writing about it." - Kirkus
"High stakes lyricism infuses White Hot Light.... At times his style owes something to the rapturous economy of Denis Johnson, and the people drifting in and out could well find a home in a Johnson story.... Huyler's work is implicitly political -- he lays bare the cruelties of poverty, and of for-profit health care in particular -- but maintains an elemental tone." - Harper's Magazine
"Huyler depicts the crises he treats with vivid and cinematic detail, but the book is less about the salacious depiction of trauma than it is an investigation into the vulnerabilities and resiliencies of human nature." - Santa Fe Reporter
"[Huyler] tells it like it is, but also manages to craft these windows into various lives that will haunt you long after you're done.... Captures life, death, the decisions that change our lives, violence, and grace--all at once." - Book Riot
"Huyler brings a beauty and thoughtfulness to crucial issues affecting medicine and society at large. Within the visceral brutality, the writing is thoughtful and self-reflective, the collection a study of caring." - Shelf Awareness
Praise for Blood of Strangers: "If Raymond Carver had been a doctor, these are the stories he would have written. There are no untarnished heroes here. This is the world as it is: lovely and disturbing all at once." - Atul Gawande
"Moving. . . . What characterizes each of these miniatures is the candor in which they are offered, and their authenticity." - San Francisco Chronicle
"The author of these doctor stories is an E.R. physician as well as a poet, and his work shows the economy and sharp attention that both jobs demand." - New Yorker
"In lyrical and beautifully controlled prose, Frank Huyler takes us into the world of emergency medicine and in the process manages to leapfrog over all our preconceptions, erase all the stereotypes that television and movies have given us. This is a wonderful debut by a gifted writer and doctor." - Abraham Verghese