Dori Goldin rushes her eight month old son, Zack, to St.
Joe's Hospital where he codes. The hospital neglects to do
a standard test and then accuses her and her husband Josh of
overreacting when they refuse to allow more extraneous tests
done on their son. After being stopped by the police, at the
request of Dr. Stokes, the Goldin's return to the hospital
to complete the series of test showing nothing abnormal
regarding the health of Zack. According to Dori, sometimes
babies just do weird things.
Dr. Stokes had always been an outsider because of her
perfectionist tendencies to over study and under socialize,
but when she met Leo the two of them hit it off. She became
pregnant with her son, James, but divorced her husband and
became a single mom. Much to her son's distress, his father
was killed a few years later. De ja vu' for Darlene Stokes,
as her dad had been absent from her childhood as well.
About the time the Goldin's case was about to come into full
swing, Darlene's dad comes back into the picture -- an
ex-con. Great! She felt the desire to once again do what was
right, so she made sure he got a job at the hospital and let
him live with her. What a bad decision on her part, since
she was the spearhead of the case trying to take Zach away
permanently because she knew that Dori was harming her own
son. What Darlene forgot was that when you point a finger
out, three are coming back at you. The media took full
advantage of mass hysteria on a subject near and dear to
people's heart -- the taking of children by bureaucratic
hierarchy, with Darlene serving as the scapegoat. Even
though she knew she was right, there was nothing she could
do about it, or was there?
Darin Strauss' MORE THAN IT HURTS YOU is a remarkably
written novel of twists and turns which both elate and
infuriate the reader. His ability to take real life
situations and show how the media can ramrod itself into
making people believe a façade is amazing. It even makes the
reader question his own true north moral compass. What an
incredible read. I highly recommend it for anyone wanting an
intellectually moral challenge.
The acclaimed author of Chang and Eng
returns with a literary showstopper— a beautifully realized
novel that
at its heart is the story of a woman who will risk
everything to feel
something; a doctor whose diagnosis brings her entire life into
question; and a man who suddenly realizes that being a good
husband and
a good father can no longer comfortably coexist.
Josh
Goldin was savoring a Friday afternoon break in the coffee room,
harmlessly flirting with coworkers while anticipating the
weekend at
home where his wife, Dori, waited with their eight-month-old
son, Zack.
And then Josh’s secretary rushed in, using words like
intensive care, lost consciousness, blood. . . .
That morning, Dori had walked into the emergency room with
her son in
severe distress. Enter Dr. Darlene Stokes: an African-American
physician and single mother whose life is dedicated both to
her own son
and navigating the tricky maze of modern-day medicine. But
something
about Dori stirred the doctor’s suspicions. Darlene had
heard of the
sensational diagnosis of Munchausen by Proxy, where a mother
intentionally harms her baby, but had never come upon a case
of it
before. It was rarely diagnosed and extraordinarily
controversial.
Could it possibly have happened here?
As their four
lives
intersect with dramatic consequences, Darlene, Dori, and
Josh are
pushed to their breaking points as they confront the
nightmare that has
become their new reality. Darin Strauss’s extraordinary
novel is set in
a world turned upside down—where doctors try to save babies
from their
parents, police use the law to tear families apart, and the
people you
know the best end up surprising you the most.
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