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.