At 41, Sam Kiehl was a successful political consultant, a long-distance runner and rock climber, the single father of a grown son, and lover of a popular newspaper columnist. Then he contracted a virus that targeted his brain and left him totally disabled. With few treatment options available, and his health continuing to worsen, Sam seizes upon the chance to offer himself as a subject in the clinical field trial of a new drug, Zomalovir. He becomes Patient 002" and joins a group of patients from all walks of life who are similarly afflicted and similarly desperate. What happens to Sam, to the young woman named Tracy Marsh with whom he is partnered, and to the others in his group, provides a sometimes shocking, sometimes humorous, always dramatic picture of human medical research, a world seldom seen. As the research subjects respond or fail to respond to their experimental treatment, as participating doctors and nurses observe, and as Physicians for Ethical Research, the pharmaceutical company that developed the drug and operates the study, deals with harsh truths about the costs and risks of conducting research, Patient 002 becomes a riveting tale of choices made and consequences faced at the center of the illness experience. Patient 002 is also a love story, as Sam discovers passion and romance in an unexpected places. It s also a novel of friendships forged in extreme circumstance, and of the human capacity for survival in the face of overwhelming obstacles. Beware of hopefulness, a character in the novel says. Yet Patient 002, especially when the patients take matters into their own hands in surprising ways, is a novel of hope, healing and astonishing actions.
Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Medical research subjects get the shaft before striking back in Skloot's latest, an amusing and absorbing novel that pits a motley crew of Davids against a callous corporate Goliath. Sam Kiehl, a 42-year-old Vietnam vet and political analyst, signs up for a double-blind placebo-controlled study at an esteemed research center in Oregon after being diagnosed with herpes. The curiously named pharmaceutical company, Physicians for Ethical Research (PER), is optimistic over its promising drug, Zomalovir. Sam soon strikes up a romance with his massage therapist, Jessica Foster, but after PER goes bankrupt and cancels the Zomalovir study, the distraught subjects (including Sam) resort to desperate measures to continue receiving treatment. Skloot, the author of three novels, three memoirs and five volumes of poetry, treats the complicated and often absurd protocols of drug studies with an authoritative, compassionate touch. The balance of humor, romance and cold observation makes for a commendable yarn. (Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
After writing piercing and lucid memoirs and poems about his struggles with a neurological disorder, Skloot returns to fiction in his first novel in 10 years to ponder the anguished yet sometimes munificent revelations of illness, while taking a few shots at the pharmaceutical industry. A helicopter pilot in Vietnam and an athletic and fiery opinion analyst in Portland, Oregon, Sam is afflicted with a cruelly marauding virus that is obliterating his physical strength and mental acuity. He signs up for a drug trial, hoping for a miracle cure, as does the hyperchatty Tracy, who seems to be getting better until the program is abruptly aborted by the perhaps speciously named Physicians for Ethical Research. Sam, abetted by Jessica, who is equally skilled in therapeutic massage and computer hacking, decides to fight back. Skloot turns an involving tale of the mind-body puzzle with a magnetic cast of unusual characters into an archly funny caper, infusing this masterfully understated, tender, and shrewd tale of love and healing with insight, compassion, and a touch of righteous indignation. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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More About the Author
Floyd Skloot is a creative nonfiction writer, poet, and fiction writer whose work has received three Pushcart Prizes, a Pen USA Literary Award, two Pacific NW Book Awards, an Independent Publishers Book Award, and two Oregon Book Awards. His writing has appeared in such distinguished magazines as The New York Times Magazine, Atlantic Monthly, Harper's, Poetry, American Scholar, Georgia Review, Sewanee Review, Southern Review, Hudson Review, Gettysburg Review, Boulevard, Virginia Quarterly Review, Prairie Schooner, and Creative Nonfiction. His seventeen books include the memoirs In the Shadow of Memory (University of Nebraska Press, 2003), A World of Light (University of Nebraska Press, 2005), and The Wink of the Zenith: The Shaping of a Writer's Life (University of Nebraska Press, 2008); the poetry collections Approximately Paradise (Tupelo Press, 2005), The End of Dreams (Louisiana State University Press, 2006), Selected Poems: 1970-2005 (Tupelo Press, 2008), and The Snow's Music (Louisiana State University Press, 2008); and the novels Summer Blue (Story Line Press, 1994) and Patient 002 (Rager Media, 2007).
His newest books include his first collection of short stories, Cream of Kohlrabi (Tupelo Press, 2011), and a forthcoming collection of poems, Close Reading (Tupelo Press, 2013).
He co-edited The Best American Science Writing 2011 (HarperCollins/Ecco Press) with his daughter, Rebecca Skloot.
He contributes book reviews to the New York Times Book Review, Boston Globe, Philadelphia Inquirer, Los Angeles Times, Harvard Review, Sewanee Review, Notre Dame Review and other publications, and is a member of the National Book Critics Circle.
Floyd has taught at the Mid-Atlantic Creative Nonfiction Summer Writers Conference at Goucher College, the Paris Writers Workshop, and elsewhere.
He lives in Portland, Oregon, with his wife, Beverly Hallberg, a weaver and landscape painter, whose light-filled works cross between impressionistic and abstracted styles. Her paintings grace the covers of Floyd's books, Approximately Paradise, The End of Dreams, Selected Poems: 1970-2005, and The Snow's Music. See her work at www.beverlyhallberg.com.
Floyd's daughter, Rebecca Skloot, is the bestselling author of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (Crown Books, 2010), winner of the Heartland Prize and Wellcome Trust Book Prize, and named Best Book of 2010 by Amazon.com. Visit her website at www.rebeccaskloot.com.
Skloot is represented by Andrew Blauner at Blauner Books Literary Agency. Contact him at: Blauner@aol.com.
His newest books include his first collection of short stories, Cream of Kohlrabi (Tupelo Press, 2011), and a forthcoming collection of poems, Close Reading (Tupelo Press, 2013).
He co-edited The Best American Science Writing 2011 (HarperCollins/Ecco Press) with his daughter, Rebecca Skloot.
He contributes book reviews to the New York Times Book Review, Boston Globe, Philadelphia Inquirer, Los Angeles Times, Harvard Review, Sewanee Review, Notre Dame Review and other publications, and is a member of the National Book Critics Circle.
Floyd has taught at the Mid-Atlantic Creative Nonfiction Summer Writers Conference at Goucher College, the Paris Writers Workshop, and elsewhere.
He lives in Portland, Oregon, with his wife, Beverly Hallberg, a weaver and landscape painter, whose light-filled works cross between impressionistic and abstracted styles. Her paintings grace the covers of Floyd's books, Approximately Paradise, The End of Dreams, Selected Poems: 1970-2005, and The Snow's Music. See her work at www.beverlyhallberg.com.
Floyd's daughter, Rebecca Skloot, is the bestselling author of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (Crown Books, 2010), winner of the Heartland Prize and Wellcome Trust Book Prize, and named Best Book of 2010 by Amazon.com. Visit her website at www.rebeccaskloot.com.
Skloot is represented by Andrew Blauner at Blauner Books Literary Agency. Contact him at: Blauner@aol.com.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Perfect Book for PWCs,
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This review is from: Patient 002 (Paperback)
As a PWC (Person with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome), I found this book riveting. It was hard to put down once I started reading it, then I had to read it again. The author perfectly describes what it is like to live with CFS. Unfortunately, I know this to be true.
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