The Healer's Heart
A Modern Novel of the Life of St. Luke
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- $7.99
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
A contemporary look at the spiritual journey of a doctor named Luke that thoughtfully brings the Gospel physician into our 21st-century world.
If you have no cause worth dying for, do you have a reason to live?
While sorting through family papers following his father’s massive stroke, Dr. Luke Tayspill, Yale Medical School’s top infectious disease specialist, stumbles across a manuscript written decades earlier by his beloved grandfather. The book bears an ominous title, The Deaths of Lukas Tayspill—not death, but deaths.
A closer inspection reveals that the book is about three characters with the same name. The first two Lucas Tayspills were 19th century Quakers who suffered martyrs’ deaths. The third story—set in the future—ends abruptly with the arrival of a Dr. Lucas Tayspill in a plague-ridden, war torn African land. Was his grandfather foretelling Luke’s own life story—and prophesying his death?
Luke sets out on a deeply personal journey to Sierra Leone. But his pilgrimage to understand death leads to a powerful and unexpected encounter with the essence of life. Will Luke fulfill his grandfather’s vision?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Komp (A Window to Heaven), a physician and Yale medical professor, creates a fictional world around Dr. Luke Tayspill, an infectious disease specialist whose father is dying and whose at-times estranged wife Theo has a mysterious illness she refuses to discuss. In addition, Luke finds a manuscript his beloved grandfather wrote which comes close to predicting his own death. Luke's story covers the world: his childhood home in Ohio; war-torn Sarajevo, where Theo served as a war correspondent; London, where she deals with post-traumatic stress and a troubling diagnosis; a quiet Gullah island off the coast of South Carolina with unexpected family connections; and rebel- and illness-infested Sierra Leone, where Luke goes to try to fulfill the story his grandfather started. Komp also jumps between the present and past as she revisits Luke's childhood, his early married years and various points throughout the centuries-long Tayspill family history. Luke's conversion to Christianity is believable, but readers don't get to see the thought processes behind it. While the characters are compelling, there are so many stories here that none of them get the attention or detail they deserve, slowing the book's progress and leaving readers confused. Komp has great potential as a storyteller, but it's not fully realized here.
