num_pages: 256
description: Outside Chester, Pennsylvania, in 1960, the burning of a black family’s home causes David Nachman to decide, “I was going to be a doctor, a good doctor like my father.” It is, however, a very different future that awaits David. In a single moment his life changes forever in this stunning new book from the author of the acclaimed novel Therapy.The son of a dedicated doctor and a fragile artistic mother, David grows up feeling an outsider as a Jew in a gentile neighborhood, but struggles to fit in. He becomes friends with a group of teenagers who play poker for high stakes, ride around in fast cars, and crack jokes about sex that leave fifteen-year-old (and still prepubescent) David laughing along in hidden pain. “For better or worse, much worse perhaps, I followed Vic, Chuckie, and Crow up Rynard Road… I thought of these guys as my family: glue-haired Crow Randazzo, sweet-potato-grin Vic Quint, and croupier Chuckie Halbert.” A sudden challenge from his friends results in a horrifying accident, plunging David into a future far beyond any troubles he or his family could have ever imagined.Told retrospectively, with clarity and gentle wit, David’s story unfolds with mesmerizing intensity. His slow agonizing steps to become part of the world again form the basis of his search for a reconstructed self: a quest that buffets him from social protests to religious pursuits to headlong romance.A Good Doctor’s Son is David’s story and his family’s, but it is also a tale of remembrance for David’s victim, a three-year-old girl, and her family and their anguish. At its center is a story that examines the grainy area between the good intentions of people and the unexpected ways they actually wind up living their lives—a gap that David must bridge to make his life whole.
language: English
title: A Good Doctor's Son
titlecomplete: A Good Doctor's Son
genres: Fiction
ratings_count: 30
awards: awardedAt: 915177600000
name: Colorado Book Award
category: Literary Fiction
publisher: William Morrow