Monday Mornings

Every time surgeons operate, they're betting their skills are better than the brain tumor, the faulty heart valve, the fractured femur. Sometimes, they're wrong. At Chelsea General, surgeons answer for bad outcomes at the Morbidity and Mortality conference, known as M and M. This extraordinary peek behind the curtain into what is considered the most secretive meeting in all of medicine is the back drop for the entire book.

Monday Mornings, by Dr. Sanjay Gupta, follows the lives of five surgeons at Chelsea General as they push the limits of their abilities and confront their personal and professional failings, often in front of their peers at M and M. It is on Monday mornings that reflection and introspection occurs, usually in private. It is Monday Mornings that provides a unique look at the real method in which surgeons learn - through their mistakes. It is Monday Mornings when, if you're lucky, you have a chance at redemption.

In the high-stakes profession of neurosurgery, the bigger you are, the harder you fall. Or so it seems in the nifty first novel by CNN's chief medical correspondent Gupta, who is also a practicing neurosurgeon and nonfiction author. At the Chelsea General Hospital in Michigan, Dr. Ty Wilson is suffering from a serious crisis in confidence after a child dies during an operation. His medical colleagues include George Villanueva, a hulking former NFL player turned ER doctor, and Tina Ridgeway, a meticulous neurosurgeon whose home life is a mess. For quirkiness, there's a patient who undergoes surgery for bleeding cerebral aneurysms and develops an unusual postoperative mania for sketching human ears. For irony, the perfectionist head of surgery makes a jumbo mistake, and a middle-aged Korean neurosurgeon is afflicted with a deadly brain tumor. Despite their flaws, these fictional physicians possess extremely high empathy quotients. They make clinical and personal blunders, yet some attain redemption, and nearly all experience epiphanies. You don't have to be a brain surgeon to write a novel, but with Monday Mornings, readers will be glad one did.--Booklist

Praise for CHEATING DEATH: "You will be on the edge of your seat as you read the superbly crafted stories of people who have beaten the odds, something I like to think I know quite a bit about. My friend Dr. Sanjay Gupta, America's doctor, has written a page-turner. It's an exciting medical thriller with the compassion, hope, excitement and aspiration that define Sanjay." --Lance Armstrong

Praise for CHEATING DEATH: "I owe my recovery and my health to medical advances and the remarkable pioneers behind them. In his new book, the World's Doctor, Sanjay Gupta, delivers a breathtaking preview of a coming revolution in medicine that challenges virtually everything we think we know about living and dying. A truly provocative and fascinating reading experience." --President Bill Clinton

"MONDAY MORNINGS launches off the page like a thoroughbred out of the gates: the pace is fast and furious and the authenticity of the surgical situations make this a hard-to-put-down novel. Gupta has created a group of unforgettable characters and placed them in situations in the fictional Chelsea General that feel all too real. But hospitals are , after all, Gupta's turf; his insights into the craft of surgery combined with vivid story-telling make MONDAY MORNINGS a gripping and wonderful read right down to the wire. MONDAY MORNINGS is a winner.--Abraham Verghese, author of Cutting for Stone

"A brilliant and authentic inside look at the high-stakes world of neurosurgery, filled with memorable characters and searing moments, written with a surgeon's deftness and a healer's heart."--Samuel Shem, M.D., author of The House of God and The Spirit of the Place

"In MONDAY MORNINGS, Dr. Sanjay Gupta takes us inside the veins of the patients, the hospital, and the brilliant surgeons at Chelsea General in a thrilling, often funny, and sometimes heartbreaking read. You'll laugh. You'll cry. I could not put it down."--David E. Kelley, creator of Boston Legal, Ally McBeal, and Chicago Hope

Sanjay Gupta, MD, is a practicing neurosurgeon at Emory University Hospital and associate chief of service at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta.