Customer Reviews

Bitter Medicine: Two Doctors, Two Deaths, And A Small Town's Search For Justice (Stone Dance of the Chameleon)

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Bitter Medicine is easy reading. You can finish it in an hour or two. It tells the facts, based on newspaper accounts, of startling events that occured in the small town of Port Angeles in 1998. Dr. Turner, a respected pediatrician, who had practiced in the community for nearly 25 years, was accused of causing the death of a brain dead infant who stopped breathing while nursing at home. After two sustained attempts at resuscitation Turner closed off the infant's nose and mouth. The second sensational event occurred several weeks later when the emergency room physician on duty the same night brutally murdered his wife. His defense -- insanity precipitated by the events in the emergency room. A jury apparently bought it and Dr. Bruce Rowan was found not guilty. The people in the town were so disgusted by the way these cases were handled by the 4-term prosecutor that he was soundly defeated in the next election. Charges against Turner were eventually dropped with the concurrence of the judge and a special prosecutor appointed to avoid the pervasive taint of local politics. This should make a fascinating story. Unfortunately, Carlton Smith never goes beyond the superficial to look at the underlying medical, legal, and ethical issues is these two cases. Nor does he capture the climate and culture of Port Angeles, a blue collar timber and fishing town, very well. The author apparently failed to interview or even contact any of the major characters in the story. Mr. Smith seems more determined to cash in on the immediacy of the story than the meaning of the events. His thesis: Arrogant doctors get away with murder. Well, no....

For much better coverage of the Turner case, "A Baby's Death, A Town's Pain" written by Los Angeles Times reporter Barry Siegel is worth reading. A good study of what happened to Dr. Bruce Rowan and why has yet to be written.

From my perspective, Bitter Medicine was a hard pill to swallow.

It's hard to conjure sympathy or empathy for the principals of this case because the author gives you very little background on them. The scant details that are given about Dr. Rowan's wife (Debbie, the victim) essentially reduce her to a non-person; not to mention the facts are erroneous. Much of the information is obviously culled from newspaper articles; and for some reason, Smith spends more time on the city's new newspaper editor's role than the hapless Debbie Rowan. The omission of important testimony leaves the reader to wonder what the motive was. Basically, this was an interesting story, it just wasn't very satisfying.

I know many of the people personnaly that were in this book, and find it hard to believe the lack of research that was done - not much more than ordering newspaper articles and court transcripts. He misses easy to look-up facts like where Debbie Rowan is from (she's from Boise, not Weiser, and she didn't grow up with Bruce as the book states).

I was at the Rowan trial, and it was obvious that he was innocent to everyone there. That 12 jurors voted 11-1 on the first ballot that he was not guilty, and eventually agreed that he was not culpable for the crime speaks for itself. This author was obviously not at any of the trials - I would be surprised if he ever visited Port Angeles.

A fasinating story for sure - read it if you have not read anything else. This book is basically a long newspaper article, with very little insight.

Although it doesn't draw any definite conclusions, this book doesn't need to. It goes into great detail about what happened to Dr. Turner, and especially Dr. Rowan. The book is over 300 pages long so there is enough detail for you to be able to draw those conclusions for yourself.

It does leave open however, whether Dr. Rowan was insane at the time of the murder. That part is still a mystery.

I'm an avid but discriminating true crime reader and I found this quite interesting. It certainlly took me more than an hour to read (see the first review)! I'm also an RN, and found the medical events believable and well explained. I got a little tired of the political aspects, but that's more my problem than the author's. The references to life-long depression were accurate (I also lived many decades with undiagnosed depression) and the bizarre crime made sense, horrible as it was. The writing was good quality. I recommend this book highly.