Beautiful ballerina Nicole Hudson, who rose to Broadway stardom from a heartbreaking childhood, is stirred by flowers and letters from a secret admirer who is inspired by her dancing. His letters hint at a great aspiration he has and at his despair over obstacles thwarting him.
Her secret admirer is David Lang, a young doctor with a medical breakthrough---a way of re-growing damaged nerves to cure brain and spinal-cord injuries. David’s frustration arises because his experimental treatment, which he believes to be safe, requires approval from New York’s health system, CareFree, a bureaucracy wracked with cost overruns and other, politically motivated priorities. To David’s chagrin, it will take years for him to get through the red tape.
When the ballerina, Nicole, suffers a brain injury that leaves her blind, her only hope is David’s new cure. She never imagines that the neurosurgeon treating her is also her secret admirer.
Nicole learns of the new treatment and pleads with David to try it on her. Moved by her desperation, he does the unthinkable. He performs the first of two brain surgeries on Nicole. The second operation must follow within weeks, if she is to regain her sight.
David’s illegal surgery unleashes a firestorm. His license is suspended, and he is ordered to discontinue Nicole’s treatment or face jail. David vows to complete Nicole’s treatment, no matter the price. Mortified that he could lose his license and be jailed, Nicole refuses further treatment.
Will she ever see again?
What will happen when David is forced to take on the whole system---and the powerful, unswerving official who runs it---to fight for his work, his ideals, and the woman he loves?
An unusual hero, a tender love story, a revolutionary medical breakthrough, and a bitter conflict with the law converge in one explosive case.
Noble Vision won two national literary honors highly acclaimed in independent publishing: ForeWord magazine’s Book-of-the-Year and Writer’s Digest’s International Book Awards.
As innovative as its surgeon-protagonist, Noble Vision breaks the mold that encases much of today’s fiction. In an age in which plot stories and character studies, not to mention romances and thrillers, appear in distinctly separate categories of fiction, and thought-provoking themes are rare, Noble Vision combines a rich mix of story elements in one satisfying read. It is a nail-biting thriller, a passionate love story, and a duel of the conflicting ideologies piercing the heart of medicine today. If the current healthcare system has ever left you feeling frustrated, helpless, and afraid, Noble Vision will tell you why.
Noble Vision is considered “very highly recommended reading” by Midwest Book Review. The novel's dramatic portrayal of the struggle of a doctor who wants to practice his profession by his own judgment and conscience versus the dictates of a universal health system earned endorsements from American Medical Association past president Edward Annis, syndicated columnist Walter Williams, magazine magnate Steve Forbes, and Nobel laureate Milton Friedman.
Noble Vision is published by Winged Victory Press, whose mission is to publish stories of unusual people doing unusual things, stories with something vitally important to say, and stories that inspire us to fight for our freedom and individuality.
The defects of government-controlled medicine are dramatized effectively in this page-turning story of the love of a brilliant physician for a beautiful ballerina who becomes his patient.
---MILTON FRIEDMAN, Nobel laureate economist
Salutary tale of what can happen to medical breakthroughs if Big Government claws even deeper into our healthcare system!
---STEVE FORBES, President and CEO, Forbes magazine
. . . an intriguing novel about how unintended consequences of good intentions can have a devastating impact on the healing professions. Unfortunately for us, Noble Vision, while a novel, comes too close to describing today's reality in medical practice. As such, it should serve as a wake-up call to free medical practice from the heavy hand of government.
---WALTER WILLIAMS, syndicated columnist
. . . Noble Vision is a chilling suspense story, with an intricate plot that thickens as the author explores deeper and deeper into the lives and minds of the characters. A well-researched . . . sensitively written . . . inherently captivating novel of suspense, Noble Vision is very highly recommended reading.
---MIDWEST BOOK REVIEW
Gen LaGreca’s novel does more to debunk the theory of nationalized healthcare than 90-percent of the non-fiction rebuttals on the market. It illustrates through a well-crafted plot the evils of bureaucratically managed healthcare while entertaining the reader at the same time. . . . The mounting conflicts of this lovingly sculpted first novel will keep you turning pages well into the night.
---LAISSEZ FAIRE BOOKS
A gripping story superimposed on today's threats to quality medical care. It's a great novel standing on its own, even without any medicine in it. However, this remarkable book also demonstrates the dire results of medical decisions made by non-medical bureaucrats and power-hungry politicians. Admittedly a novel, it is filled with truths of today.
---EDWARD ANNIS, MD, Past President, American Medical Association
The novel deals with some of the most serious issues of the day, lending the story an immediacy and vibrancy. The author's prose is polished and professional.
---WRITER'S DIGEST magazine
It was a wonderful surprise and a great joy to discover Noble Vision. It is an absolute page-turner of a novel with a strong pro-market message.
---JOHN BLUNDELL, author of Margaret Thatcher: A Portrait of the Iron Lady
. . . a novel about liberty . . . If you like Ayn Rand's novels, you'll like this one.
---EZRA LEVANT, publisher, The Western Standard
. . . [Noble Vision] captivated me from beginning to end. Its grim vision of the near future---or is it the present?---of medicine is all too accurate. Can a few men and women of principle turn it around? One must have hope.
---JANE ORIENT, MD, Executive Director, Association of American Physicians and Surgeons
The novel both communicates and concretizes important philosophical insights and also deals with a very important practical problem, i.e. the future of medical care in the United States. It is truly a pleasure to read a first class novel which incorporates Ayn Rand's philosophy.
---JOHN ALLISON, Chairman of the Board, BB&T
A beautifully crafted and completely engaging novel. I read it in one sitting. It made me want to stand up and cheer!
---JAMES VAWTER, MD
Noble Vision takes on a controversial issue---health care and what is wrong with it. It's an inspiring, eye-opening book that the general public will enjoy and a must-read for healthcare professionals.
---HUNTSVILLE TIMES, Alabama
A remarkable first novel . . .
---GALEN INSTITUTE, Health Policy Matters
Noble Vision is a fine read. I got so drawn into the characters and plot. It reminded me of Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead.
---JUDITH KLEINFELD, PhD, University of Alaska psychology professor and author of Go for It!
Noble Vision is a wonderful literary achievement. An extraordinary hero, a tender love story, a fascinating medical discovery, and an intense family conflict are dramatically interwoven in a plot that surprises and delights.
---EDITH PACKER, JD, PhD, psychologist
Noble Vision is a suspenseful tale of one surgeon’s heroic struggle to save his work and the woman he loves. It inspires us to search inside ourselves for what we know to be true---and to seek the courage to live by it. Intertwined with her gripping plot, the author presents a convincing repudiation of the presumed benevolence of socialized medicine. Truly a story for every patient and every physician!
---BETH HAYNES, MD
A fiction reader’s delight! Noble Vision has villains you will despise and heroes you’d love to meet. Add intrigue, betrayal, romance---you’ll be captured till the end and long for Gen LaGreca’s next novel!
---KAREN TIERNEY, MD
Noble Vision is a medical thriller that tackles pressing issues in medicine today, and there's romance, too. The writing, plot, and pacing knocked my socks off. I'm a very picky editor, so if I say this author can write, she can write!
---KATHARINE O'MOORE-KLOPF, KOK Edit
About the Author
People who are inspired by the novels and philosophy of Ayn Rand will enjoy this author's work.
Genevieve (Gen) LaGreca won two national literary awards for Noble Vision, her gripping novel about a visionary doctor who wants to practice medicine by his own judgment and conscience, but his state’s health system requires otherwise. The novel won a ForeWord magazine Book-of-the-Year Award and was a finalist in the Writer’s Digest 13th international book awards---two of the most prestigious honors in the world of independent publishing.
Gen is a former pharmaceutical chemist and a fiction and social-commentary writer. She’s been a guest on the Glenn Beck Show, and her commentaries have appeared in the Orange County Register, Daily Caller, Real Clear Politics, Rocky Mountain News, Gainesville Sun,and other publications. She has been a lively guest speaker at the national conference, FreedomFest, and she has discussed her gripping novel on the Barry Farber Show and other talk-radio programs.
Asked what moved her to write Noble Vision, author Gen LaGreca replies, “After years of working in the healthcare industry, I feel as if I’m witnessing the slow death of something great, something that shouldn’t be allowed to die---America’s gold standard of medicine.” Why did she choose to write fiction? “Ever since I read Gone With the Wind at age 13, I’ve been enthralled by sweeping novels that capture a historic moment in an unforgettable way. I wanted to tell the story of what’s happening in medicine today---how it, too, could be gone with the wind---through the spellbinding magic of fiction.”
Gen is currently working on two more novels, and she has completed the screenplay adaptation of Noble Vision. For more information, see: www.WingedVictoryPress.com.
Author Genevieve "Gen" LaGreca holds a BS cum laude in chemistry from Polytechnic Institute of New York and an MA in philosophy from Columbia University.
Her first novel, Noble Vision, won two national literary awards: a ForeWord magazine Book of the Year and a Writer's Digest International Book Award. The novel garnered praise from former presidential candidate Steve Forbes, Nobel laureate Milton Friedman, syndicated columnist Walter Williams, and other influential thinkers. Gen has written the screenplay for Noble Vision and is currently at work on her next two novels.
When asked what moved her to write Noble Vision, Gen replies, "After years of working in the healthcare industry, I feel as if I'm witnessing the slow death of something great, something that shouldn't be allowed to die---America's gold standard of medicine." Why did she choose to write fiction? "Ever since I read Gone With the Wind at age 13, I've been enthralled by sweeping novels that capture a historic moment in an unforgettable way. I wanted to tell the story of what's happening in medicine today---how it, too, could be gone with the wind---through the spellbinding magic of fiction."
Gen also writes commentaries, which have appeared in the Orange County Register, Daily Caller, Rocky Mountain News, South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Front Page Magazine, Binghamton Press & Sun-Bulletin, Fauquier Times-Democrat, Daily Sundial, Los Angeles Daily Journal, Beaumont (Texas) Enterprise, Gainesville Sun, Bloomington Pantagraph, and other publications. She has been a lively radio guest, discussing her dramatic novel on popular shows.
Gen appeared on the Glenn Beck Show on national TV to discuss her "Self-Help Guide to Living in a Free Society," published in The New Individualist magazine. She also appeared various times on the Barry Farber Show to discuss her writings and the powerful role of fiction in portraying inspiring stories and thought-provoking themes. Gen has also been an invited participant at several Liberty Fund colloquia.
Prior to fiction writing, Gen worked as a pharmaceutical chemist, business consultant, and corporate writer. As the ghost-writer for a healthcare CEO, she has written dozens of magazine and newsletter articles that offer timely commentaries on business issues facing medical professionals.
You can read all of Gen's articles at the American Chronicle: http://www.americanchronicle.com/authors/view/1669.
To learn more about Gen and her award-winning novel, Noble Vision, visit: www.wingedvictorypress.com.
I don't usually write book reviews for novels or books that generally are considered to be works of "fiction," although I regularly read a great many novels for my own enjoyment, merely for the sake of recreation. Now and then, however, a novel comes along that I consider to be a work of "fiction that makes an important point." This is the case with Gen LaGreca's new novel, "Noble Vision." Written in the tradition of Ayn Rand's "The Fountainhead" and Dean Koontz's "Dark Rivers of the Heart," LaGreca's book does, indeed, "make an important point," and does it superbly. The battlefield is sociopolitical geography and the war is rational individualism against state totalitarianism.
The basic plot of the novel is really quite simple, but the philosophical ramifications are profound. Dr. David Lang, a noted and successful neurosurgeon, has discovered a way to regenerate nerve tissue. The government (of the state of New York, in this case) will not allow him to try his experimental procedure on Nicole Hudson, a professional ballerina who has become blind because of a fall which occurred during an explosion at the theater where she was performing. And why can't Dr. Lang help Nicole to possibly regain her sight with his new medical breakthrough? Well, because medical practice in New York is now regulated by the state's socialized medicine program (named, interestingly enough, "CareFree"), and Dr. Lang's procedure has not yet been "officially" approved. It doesn't matter, of course, that Nicole, as his patient, has granted him permission to try the new procedure.
There are a number of subplots in the story, adding complexity to both the major theme of the novel and the suspense experienced by the reader, and a cast of characters who are clearly drawn and with whom the reader will either identify or vilify. The state's governor is an exemplar of the truly corrupt politician; the head of the state's socialized medicine program is a compromised physician (who just happens to be Dr. Lang's father!); and Marie Lang, David's wife, who is also a physician but one who has caved in to the powers-that-be, has given up her dream of being a cardiologist to be a general practitioner because that was the "socially correct" thing to do. Other characters grace the pages of this fine novel and the reader has no trouble determining where they stand in relation to the main theme of the book. Yes, it's pretty much black and white, and that's the way good fiction ought to be when it's trying to get the reader to think about an important issue. This is what fiction in the "Romantic" tradition is meant to be. In LaGreca's novel there are no namby-pamby gray areas of moral indecisiveness; there are no colorless characters who couldn't be heroes or villains because they wouldn't know the difference; there is no compromise between true individualism and the suffocating policies of state collectivism. Hurray for that!
Remember Hilary Clinton's proposed healthcare program back in the 1990s? One thought that occurred to me as I read further into this novel was how close this story was to what probably would have occurred if her healthcare program had, in fact, been implemented. One point that stood out was this: in the Clinton program, as I recall, a physician could be fined and/or imprisoned for treating a patient privately. I found such a proposal shocking at the time. In "Noble Vision," this possibility becomes "real," in the sense that a novel can actually serve to illustrate just how such an immoral policy would be applied if executed, and the consequences of such a misguided program. I am old enough to remember the days when the practice of medicine was considered a "calling," and physicians were more concerned about treating their patients than about becoming rich or meeting the arbitrary whims of some bureaucrat. The practice of medicine does not mix well with politics; in fact, I would argue that politics would be (and yet may be) the death of good, sound medical practice.
There are, in my considered opinion, three types of people (or institutions) one should absolutely avoid: Those who say (1) "I know what is best for you"; (2) "I'm only doing this for your own good"; and (3) "This will hurt me more than it will you." Substitute the "State" or "government" for "I," or "I'm," or "me" in the above statements and you'll get my point and, I think, the warning that this novel provides. Socialized medicine is, in reality, "antisocial" medicine, and the evidence can be found in the failing programs implemented in countries such as England and Canada. LaGreca's novel simply brings this idea into "reality" by showing what would inevitably happen.
A brief word about the writing itself. I am supersensitive to sentence structure and word usage when it comes to fiction. I will cease reading any novel when I begin to pay more attention to the writing itself than to the story. Fortunately, in this case, I have nothing but praise for the writing style of the author. She writes excellent prose; there is no excessive description, which means no superfluous adjectives and adverbs (so common these days), and no complex sentences to confuse the reader, but just a comfortable "flow" of words, driven by nouns and verbs, which propels the story forward and doesn't interfere with the readers' involvement in the story itself. LaGreca is not only a great storyteller, she is also a great story-stylist.
Now, does Dr. David Lang get to perform his experimental procedure on Nicole Hudson (with whom he is secretly in love), and does it all end well? I am not one to give away the ending of a book which will, I guarantee, keep you turning the pages into the night. An excellent story, highly recommended by one who doesn't do so lightly, especially when it comes to fiction. But, this novel is truly "fiction that makes an important point."
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In many ways, this book is reminiscent of Ayn Rand's, The Fountainhead. The struggle of the neurosurgeon, David Lang, to do his work his way, is similar to the struggle of Howard Roark, but, in many ways, the struggle is more intense. Every medical student and resident should read this book. It is both an exceptionally well written novel in the great romantic tradition, and a warning of nightmarish consequences for every patient, if the government continues to increase its death grip over medicine.
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Since I work in medicine Gen LaGreca's novel was especially pleasurable. The novel starts off the exceptionally talented Nicole Hudson performing at a ballet titled Triumph. It is a rewriting of the myths of Prometheus and Pandora. Prometheus brings fire to man and Zeus to punish him chains him to a rock. In an effort to punish Man, Zeus gives Pandora a golden box which as you know she opens. However, the ballet is rewritten where Pandora frees Prometheus and together they banish the evil released by the box and weather the wrath of Zeus. In a not so subtle effort at foreshadowing, the novel follows this basic plot. Dr. David Lang is a brilliant neurosurgeon who pioneers a technique to regenerate severed nerve tissues such as spinal cords and optic nerves. He lives in a New York State where there is socialized medicine but more advanced than that in current day Massachusetts. He and his fellow doctors are bound by rolls and rolls of red tape. The program called Carefree has seized complete control of medicine and punishes doctors with heavy fines and even jail for disobedience. To obtain treatments for patients doctors must plead with bureaucrats for approval. The fees are set by the state so even if a doctor performs 12 hours of surgery, the state will only pay for 6. Dr. Lang is unhappily married to Marie who is a general practitioner who each step of her life chose to appease the majority. He does enjoy the company of his brother Randy Lang who is the president of the hospital and seems more pragmatic. Dr. Lang finds relief and joy in stealing away to watch Nicole Hudson dance in Triumph. Then one day she is blinded in an accident while on the stage. Her career is at an end and her one means of happiness is cut off from her unless Dr. Lang steps in and risks his career, jail and the wrath of the state to see to it that Nicole will see again. There are a number of subplots and surprising twists that kept me reading even though I knew what was going to happen. The style, the plot, the characters and the philosophical basis for the book are heavily influenced by Ayn Rand and by a clear concern for the current direction of medicine. The first portion of the book, LaGreca's writing is clearly in the long shadow of Rand. Thankfully she breaks free in the second half of the book. As far as first novels go, the rough edges in this one are minimized by a driven plot, characters who I found myself caring about and making an important philosophical and political statement. Don't think it will actually happen? I wouldn't be so sure. Getting approval for procedures and radiology scans are already well established and insurance companies already set fees regardless of the actual work done. At least in our world if you are unhappy with one insurance company you can switch to another or if you are a doctor you can choose not to accept a certain type of insurance if you believe they are being unfair or are difficult to deal with. Despite very clear problems in current state programs, prominent physicians, professional societies and prestigious medical journals are all clamoring for more state intervention. This enjoyable novel will should make you question these recommendations and even offers solutions of its own in a way that you won't notice any soapboxes around. This novel isn't without its own flaws nonetheless I recommend it highly.
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First Sentence:
The bus terminal was a study in gray, with its vertical steel beams, smudged windows, scuffed slate floor. Read the first pageKey Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
scar inhibitor, replacement anesthetic, noble vision, windowless lab, mobile scanner, second surgery, nerve repair, third cat, new surgery, growth protein
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
David Lang, Nicole Hudson, New York, Riverview Hospital, Warren Lang, Eileen Miller, Mack Burrow, Sister Luke, Governor Burrow, Bureau of Medicine, Randall Lang, Malcolm Burrow, Inspector Norwood, Marie Lang, Daryl Denkins, Jude's Parish, Phil Morgan, San Francisco, Animal Welfare, Cathleen Hughes, John Kendall, West Side, Adam Nutley, Madame Maximova, Wellington Ames
New! Concordance
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