Dueling in Death’s Backyard- Hearts and Romance

What could be more personal than having someone’s life in your hands?  Dueling in Death’s Backyard gives a real-life look at what happens in the OR, how a cardiac surgeon duels with death to win the life of his patient.  There’s a lot of dedication required for such a job.  A lot of confidence.  So when Dr. Cooper Logan loses a patient, he doesn’t pass on the job of telling next to kin, he shares that moment with the family, though it is hard to do.

I wanted Cooper to be a romantic character in so much as he is passionate, dedicated, unrelenting and caring.  It’s the politics of medicine that become his downfall.

Romance for a doctor like that has to be as complicated as his life in order to feel real.  At least I think so.

Cooper and a redheaded ICU nurse named Katie fall in love while he is in Med School at Tufts in Boston.  He and Katie drive down to Birmingham in her yellow VW Beetle.  The stresses of an old fashioned every other night on residency take their toll on the relationship.  When Cooper is fired from the residency, the future seems hopeless and Katie dumps him.  Cooper is devastated emotionally by the loss of his lover and logistically by the loss of their only car, which she is driving back to Boston.

 

Roberta, a female resident and one of Cooper’s few friends, lets him in on some “girl secrets” from which every male reader will benefit.  It seems that Cooper is not putting Katie first in his life.  He admits, to himself, that if it’s a choice between Katie and being a heart surgeon, he will choose his career.  But with the help of Roberta’s advice, maybe he can have both . . . or maybe not.

And, yes, of course my wife is a redhead.  She is also hotter than Katie, which is saying a lot.

So it’s safe to say this is not a romance novel.  But, the relationships are realistic.

Thomas Berger, MD