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<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3180195.The_Spirit_of_the_Place?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=blog_review" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img alt="The Spirit of the Place" border="0" src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51STUD-sf6L._SL160_.jpg" /></a> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3180195.The_Spirit_of_the_Place?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">The Spirit of the Place</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/2735.Samuel_Shem">Samuel Shem</a> 
 <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/20384574?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review"><h3>My review</h3></a>
 rating: 5 of 5 stars The Spirit of the Place
 Samuel Shem
 
 'The Spirit of the Place is written with a large heart, a healing touch, wry and wise insight into the human condition. Worthy of the Best of Samuel Shem, which is worthy indeed.'
 James Carroll, National Book Award Winner and author of House of War
 
 
 Book Description
 
 Samuel Shem's first novel, The House of God, the classic novel of life and death in an American hospital, has sold more then two million copies and is required reading in medical schools throughout the world. Thirty years later Shem returns with The Spirit of the Place, his most ambitious work yet. It goes beyond a focus on young doctors-in-training to that of a world-traveled doctor called home in the early '80s to become the doctor to the small town he ran away from, to face his own history and that of the town itself. A novel of love and death, mothers and sons, ghosts and bullies, doctors and patients, illness and healing, The Spirit of the Place spins a tale of universal human experience and the changing life of a small town with genuine warmth and humor.
 
 After a divorce and a year of wandering the world with "Doctors Without Borders," Orville Rose has settled into a new love with a beautiful Italian spiritual teacher. A telegram informs him that his mother has died. He returns to Columbia, "a Hudson River town plagued by breakage," and the startling terms of his mother's will. She has left him an enormous sum of money and her historic home, but there's a catch: he must live in her house on the Courthouse Square continuously for a year and thirteen days before he can collect. But that's hardly what Orville had in mind. As he struggles with the decision and its aftermath an entire set of unimagined events and personal transformations—both hilarious and poignant—occur.
 
 Spirit shows Shem at his finest—compassionate, capacious, funny, full of big ideas and memorable personalities. It offers an authentic, unvarnished portrait of the medical profession and underscores the crucial link between the health of individuals and the health of communities at a pivotal period of American history.
 
 <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/441261?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">View all my reviews.</a>

Literary Ventures Fund's review
rating:
recommended for: Fans of Samuel Shem's HOUSE OF GOD, fans of great fiction, anyone who is or knows doctors

The Spirit of the Place
Samuel Shem

'The Spirit of the Place is written with a large heart, a healing touch, wry and wise insight into the human condition. Worthy of the Best of Samuel Shem, which is worthy indeed.'
James Carroll, National Book Award Winner and author of House of War

Book Description

Samuel Shem's first novel, The House of God, the classic novel of life and death in an American hospital, has sold more then two million copies and is required reading in medical schools throughout the world. Thirty years later Shem returns with The Spirit of the Place, his most ambitious work yet. It goes beyond a focus on young doctors-in-training to that of a world-traveled doctor called home in the early '80s to become the doctor to the small town he ran away from, to face his own history and that of the town itself. A novel of love and death, mothers and sons, ghosts and bullies, doctors and patients, illness and healing, The Spirit of the Place spins a tale of universal ...more The Spirit of the Place
Samuel Shem

'The Spirit of the Place is written with a large heart, a healing touch, wry and wise insight into the human condition. Worthy of the Best of Samuel Shem, which is worthy indeed.'
James Carroll, National Book Award Winner and author of House of War

Book Description

Samuel Shem's first novel, The House of God, the classic novel of life and death in an American hospital, has sold more then two million copies and is required reading in medical schools throughout the world. Thirty years later Shem returns with The Spirit of the Place, his most ambitious work yet. It goes beyond a focus on young doctors-in-training to that of a world-traveled doctor called home in the early '80s to become the doctor to the small town he ran away from, to face his own history and that of the town itself. A novel of love and death, mothers and sons, ghosts and bullies, doctors and patients, illness and healing, The Spirit of the Place spins a tale of universal human experience and the changing life of a small town with genuine warmth and humor.

After a divorce and a year of wandering the world with "Doctors Without Borders," Orville Rose has settled into a new love with a beautiful Italian spiritual teacher. A telegram informs him that his mother has died. He returns to Columbia, "a Hudson River town plagued by breakage," and the startling terms of his mother's will. She has left him an enormous sum of money and her historic home, but there's a catch: he must live in her house on the Courthouse Square continuously for a year and thirteen days before he can collect. But that's hardly what Orville had in mind. As he struggles with the decision and its aftermath an entire set of unimagined events and personal transformations—both hilarious and poignant—occur.

Spirit shows Shem at his finest—compassionate, capacious, funny, full of big ideas and memorable personalities. It offers an authentic, unvarnished portrait of the medical profession and underscores the crucial link between the health of individuals and the health of communities at a pivotal period of American history.
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