The beauty in breaking : a memoir
Publication Information
New York : Riverhead Books, 2020.
Physical Description
xiv, 284 pages ; 21 cm
Summary
Michele Harper is a female, African American emergency room physician in a profession that is overwhelmingly male and white. Brought up in Washington, D.C., in an abusive family, she went to Harvard, where she met her husband. They stayed together through medical school until two months before she was scheduled to join the staff of a hospital in central Philadelphia, when he told her he couldn't move with her. Her marriage at an end, Harper began her new life in a new city, in a new job, as a newly single woman. In the ensuing years, as Harper learned to become an effective ER physician, bringing insight and empathy to every patient encounter, she came to understand that each of us is broken--physically, emotionally, psychically. How we recognize those breaks, how we try to mend them, and where we go from there are all crucial parts of the healing process.
Contents
- Introduction
- Michele: a wing and a prayer
- Dr. Harper: the view from here
- Baby Doe: born perfect
- Erik: violent behavior alter
- Dominic: body of evidence
- Jeremiah: cradle and all
- In the name of honor
- Joshua: under contract
- Paul: murda, murda
- Sitting with Olivia
- Jenny and Mary: what falls away
- Epilogue.