Carol Cassella

"A medical mystery wrapped in a contemporary love story, GEMINI is a stand out new novel from the Cassella, a practicing M.D. and author of the national bestseller OXYGEN. Think Jodi Picoult meets Abraham Verghese"--

A Novel

Gemini

A tangled malpractice suit in the wake of a devastating operating room disaster shatters the career and carefully constructed identity of anesthesiologist Marie Heaton, who also struggles with her recently blind father's increasing dependence. 75,000 first printing.

Oxygen

With the compassion of Jodi Picoult and the medical realism of Atul Gawande, real-life anesthesiologist Carol Cassella’s riveting national bestseller seamlessly melds compelling women’s fiction and medical drama to create an “involving debut that’s just what the doctor ordered” (People). Dr. Marie Heaton is an anesthesiologist at the height of her profession. She has worked, lived, and breathed her career since medical school, and she now practices at a top Seattle hospital. Marie has carefully constructed and constricted her life according to empirical truths, to the science and art of medicine. But when her tried-and-true formula suddenly deserts her during a routine surgery, she must explain the nightmarish operating room disaster and face the resulting malpractice suit. Marie’s best friend, colleague, and former lover, Dr. Joe Hillary, becomes her closest confidante as she twists through depositions, accusations and a remorseful preoccupation with the mother of the patient in question. As she struggles to salvage her career and reputation, Marie must face hard truths about the path she’s chosen, the bridges she’s burned, and the colleagues and superiors she’s mistaken for friends. A quieter crisis is simultaneously unfolding within Marie’s family. Her aging father is losing his sight and approaching an awkward dependency on Marie and her sister, Lori. But Lori has taken a more traditional path than Marie and is busy raising a family. Although Marie has been estranged from her Texas roots for decades, the ultimate responsibility for their father’s care is falling on her. As her carefully structured life begins to collapse, Marie confronts questions of love and betrayal, family bonds and the price of her own choices. Set against the natural splendor of Seattle, and inside the closed vaults of hospital operating rooms, Oxygen climaxes in a final twist that is as heartrending as it is redeeming.

“Gemini is an unforgettable novel—a morality tale, a mystery, and a love story that will leave readers breathless” (Maria Semple, New York Times bestselling author of Where’d You Go, Bernadette). As should be the case with any memorable love story, the first time Raney Remington saw Bo she hated him. When the skinny kid from the city first arrives in her Pacific Northwest hometown, Raney doesn’t quite know what to make of him. Yet her intense dislike of the know-it-all bookworm softens as Bo latches on to Raney, eager to learn about the Washington island he’s been sent for the summer. Decades later Dr. Charlotte Reese finds herself fighting to keep an unconscious ICU patient stable while also unwrapping the mystery of the unconscious woman, the victim of a hit-and-run. Consumed by questions about the woman’s identity, Charlotte enlists Eric, her journalist boyfriend, to investigate. Their search for answers brings them to heartrending truths about Jane Doe―and themselves. In beautiful interwoven storytelling, master of medical drama Carol Cassella presents two women—lifetimes apart—who face the inescapable forces shaping their lives. Filled with stunning medical detail and set against the breathtaking backdrop of the Pacific Northwest, Gemini is a vivid novel of moral complexity and emotional depth that “is just what the doctor ordered” (People).

Losing her privileged world when the abrupt failure of her husband's business catapults them into heavy debt, Claire withdraws with her daughter to the family ranch, where she resurrects her medical skills and struggles to keep the family together.

Carol Cassella

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