Harvest
Review
Harvest
Tess Gerritsen's HARVEST --- a well-paced medical thriller ---
satisfies the need "ER" initiated for more, more, more medical
insider knowledge. Gerritsen, a former internist, is the
right person to deliver the behind-the-scenes info, and she does it
with satisfying speed and detail.
The basics: transplant surgeons at a Boston hospital are giving
donor organs to wealthy private patients instead of going through
the proper channels and giving them to the patients most in
need. Where these organs are coming from is not too
difficult to determine --- the truth is absolutely
horrifying.
The heroine is Abby DiMatteo, a second-year surgical resident at
the fictional Bayside Hospital. She's tapped by the
hospital's cardiac transplant team (of which her boyfriend is a
member) as a potential recruit, even though she knows that the
chief resident, Vivian Chao, is considered the best.
But, she's told, Dr. Chao doesn't know how to play on a team ---
she's too independent. And supporting the team is of the
utmost importance.
When Abby goes against the team by helping Dr. Chao get a car crash
victim's healthy heart to a dying teenage boy instead of the wife
of a wealthy and powerful man, her career is in
jeopardy. And when she starts asking questions about a
new heart that has miraculously appeared for the wealthy patient,
trouble pours down on Abby.
For a medical scare that forces you to consider ethics, money,
power and trust, turn to HARVEST.
Reviewed by Jennifer Levitsky on January 22, 2011