By the bestselling author of Cutting for Stone, a story of medicine in the American heartland, and confronting one's deepest prejudices and fears.Nestled in the Smoky Mountains of eastern Tennessee, the town of Johnson City had always seemed exempt from the anxieties of modern American life. But when the local hospital treated its first AIDS patient, a crisis that had once seemed an “urban problem” had arrived in the town to stay. Working in Johnson City was Abraham Verghese, a young Indian doctor specializing in infectious diseases. Dr. Verghese became by necessity the local AIDS expert, soon besieged by a shocking number of male and female patients whose stories came to occupy his mind, and even take over his life. Verghese brought a singular perspective to Johnson City: as a doctor unique in his abilities; as an outsider who could talk to people suspicious of local practitioners; above all, as a writer of grace and compassion who saw that what was happening in this conservative community was both a medical and a spiritual emergency.
Abraham Verghese is an American physician, author, Professor at Stanford University’s Medical School, and Senior Associate Chair of the Department of Internal Medicine where he is renowned for his focus on healing and empathetic care. He is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and the author of four books including two memoirs and two novels.
Verghese’s extraordinary new book, The Covenant of Water, will be released May 2, 2023. With page-turning energy, it tells an epic story of India’s path to modernity through a single family living in Kerala from 1900 to the 1970s, moving through joy, tragedy, love, and marriage as the country around them shifts and turns. It’s a beautiful, humbling book about family lineage and connection, and also about the unexpected ways mankind makes progress. The Covenant of Water blends the author’s deep knowledge of and enthusiasm for the medical world with his writing genius, resulting in a bold, sweeping story that reads like a riveting classic Russian novel.
His remarkable first book, the highly praised My Own Country: A Doctor’s Story, was Verghese’s memoir about his work treating AIDS patients in rural Tennessee. He followed this with The Tennis Partner: A Story of Friendship and Loss, another eloquently personal story, this time about his friend and tennis partner, a medical resident in recovery from drug addiction. Verghese’s previous novel, Cutting for Stone, describes a period of dramatic political change in Ethiopia. It remained on the New York Times bestseller list for two years.
Verghese is the recipient of a Heinz Award in 2014 and a National Humanities Medal from Obama in 2015.