Cutting for Stone

No one even guessed she was pregnant, so the birth of twin boys to a beautiful Indian nun in a mission hospital in Ethiopia, and her subsequent death, was as unsettling as an earthquake. Shiva and Marion were adopted by two doctors at the mission and raised to be doctors. Shortly after receiving his degree, Marion, who narrates the story, is caught up in the political upheaval following the overthrow of the Ethiopian emperor and must flee his beloved homeland. He settles into an internship at a poor Catholic hospital in New York City, only to have his life hijacked by the beautiful daughter of his family’s housekeeper in Ethiopia – the woman responsible for the only discord between the closely connected brothers.
 

Verghese writes from his heart about the worlds he knows best. A surgeon himself, he grew up in Ethiopia and interned in America. His memoir of his early years as a doctor in rural Tennesse, My Own Country, was a bestseller. This saga, epic in scope and beautifully human in its details, reminded me of Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible.
 

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