Author Victoria Sweet is a consummate storyteller. Her portraits of the fascinating, often doomed residents of the Laguna Honda Hospital were spellbinding to me. But there are more treats in Sweet’s book. Even laypeople will be drawn into her medical research into Medieval medicine and how its wisdom can inform the medicine of today. And her account of her 4 year walking pilgrimage in southern France was an engaging detour interspersed at every summer. This was one of the most readable books I’ve encountered in a long time. Part autobiography, part travelogue, part history of an amazing institution, and partly a series of intelligent essays, anyone will enjoy reading this book. Required reading for doctors, but by no way not just doctors.
A: It’s an original. Never read anything like it, really.
