The Spirit of the Place [Hardcover]

Samuel Shem (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 15, 2008

A new novel by the national bestselling author of The House of God

Samuel Shem's classic novel about medical internship, The House of God, is required reading in medical schools throughout the world and is celebrated for its authentic description of medical training and practice, for its Rabelaisian comedy, and for its humanism and vision. His new novel, and most ambitious work yet, The Spirit of the Place, tells the story of an expatriate doctor called home to Columbia, New York, in the early 1980s to face his own history and that of the place. It is a novel of love and death, mothers and sons, ghosts and bullies, doctors and patients, illness and healing.

Settled into a passionate relationship with an Italian yoga instructor and happily working in a European spa, Dr. Orville Rose's newfound peace is shattered by a telegram informing him of his mother's death. On his return to Columbia, a Hudson River town of quirky people and "plagued by breakage," he learns that his mother has willed him a large sum of money, her 1981 Chrysler, and her Victorian house in the center of town. But there's a catch: he must live in her house continuously for a year and thirteen days.

As he struggles with his decision--whether to stay and meet the terms of the will or return to his love and life in Italy--Orville reconnects with Bill Starbuck, the town doctor who mentored a young Orville and who practices a long-ago kind of medicine that treats the working poor, people neglected and forgotten by the medical and insurance industries. Now in his seventies, and in need of help with the practice, Bill convinces Orville to stay.

During the course of his year and thirteen days, Orville reacquaints himself with Columbia and Columbians. He reunites with his sister and niece and comes to terms with old rivals and bitter memories. And he doctors a community in desperate need of care. He also meets Miranda Braak, a remarkable young single mother who aspires to be the town historian. Her knowledge of and reverence for the past challenges Orville to examine his own history, and her courage, integrity, and love challenge him to grow. In this story filled with wit, pointed insight, and drama, Orville learns what it means to be a healer, and to be healed.

The Spirit of the Place is Shem at his finest--compassionate, capacious, funny, full of big ideas and memorable personalities. It offers an authentic, unvarnished portrait of the medical profession and underscores the crucial link between the health of individuals and the health of communities.

Silver Award Winner in Literary Fiction-2009 Independent Publisher Book Awards

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Samuel Shem (pen name of Stephen Bergman) is a novelist, playwright, and, for three decades, a member of the Harvard Medical School faculty. His novels include The House of God, Fine, and Mount Misery. He is coauthor with his wife, Janet Surrey, of the hit Off-Broadway play Bill W. and Dr. Bob, the story of the founding of Alcoholics Anonymous (winner of the 2007 Performing Arts Award of the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence), and We Have to Talk: Healing Dialogues between Women and Men.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 334 pages
• Publisher: Kent State University Press; 1st edition (June 15, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0873389425
• ISBN-13: 978-0873389426
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #265,348 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Samuel Shem (pen name of Stephen Bergman) is a novelist, playwright, and, for three decades, a member of the Harvard Medical School faculty. His novels include The House of God, Fine, and Mount Misery. He is coauthor with his wife, Janet Surrey, of the hit Off-Broadway play Bill W. and Dr. Bob, the story of the founding of Alcoholics Anonymous (winner of the 2007 Performing Arts Award of the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence), and We Have to Talk: Healing Dialogues between Women and Men. Editors Carol Donley and Martin Kohn are cofounders of the Center for Literature, Medicine, and Biomedical Humanities at Hiram College. Since 1990 the Center has brought humanities and the health care professions together in mutually enriching interactions, including interdisciplinary courses, summer symposia, and the Literature and Medicine book series from The Kent State University Press. The first three anthologies in the series grew out of courses in the Biomedical Humanities program at Hiram. Then the series expanded to include original writing and edited collections by physicians, nurses, humanities scholars, and artists. The books in the series are designed to serve as resources and texts for health care education as well as for the general public.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Never judge a book by its cover, September 25, 2008

By 

Shana Schmadeke - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Spirit of the Place (Hardcover)

The Spirit of the Place makes two books in a row that have reminded me why I should never judge a book by its cover. The cover of this book left me thinking 'meh' but the novel itself knocked my socks off.

Shem's prose is mesmerizing and beautiful. This is a book to be savored. The plot steadily unfolds versus rushing forth. And yet, it held my attention from start to finish.

The most outstanding aspect of this novel, for me, was the emotional depth that Shem conveyed in his characters. Especially in Orville and Miranda, but also in secondary characters such as the old town physician Bill Starbuck, Miranda's sweet six year-old son Cray and Orville's passionate, impulsive pre-teen niece Amy. Even characters who made brief appearances, such as the flighty, ethereal Celestina Polo, and Starbuck's dutiful wife Babette were vivid to the reader through Orville's narration.

Orville was a man full of turmoil. His love life. His career. His relationship with his deceased mother. All his life he ran away instead of staying. Because of the terms of his mother's will, he is forced to stay. In Columbia, that is.

The town of Columbia is a character in and of itself. A town so unbelievably self-destructive that it borders on hilarious. Orville stayed under duress. Thanks to his mother's will, he stood to gain almost a million dollars by staying for at least one year and thirteen months. Could he learn to love, or at least accept his hometown. Would he?

Then there was his relationships with women. I wouldn't say I didn't like Celestina Polo, but I thought she was wrong for Orville. Miranda, on the other hand, I not only adored but completely sympathized with. It was difficult to watch Miranda and Orville's relationship deteriorate. Their fears, their emotions seemed so incredibly real. It was what most of us have felt at one time when we wanted something so badly, but were so afraid we couldn't have it that our fears became a sort of self-fulfilling prophesy.

Finally, there was Orville's relationship with his mother, Selma. Selma cared enough about her son to leave a boxful of letters to be sent to her son at specified times after her death. Yet, the letters were often harsh and critical and full of unforgiveness and grudges held by a mother against her only son.

Orville's struggle to come to terms with Selma, Miranda, and the sad little town of Columbia - and they are all intertwined - is the driving force of this story. There are several interesting subplots artfully woven in, such as the fight to save an historic Columbian hotel, Orville's relationship with the man who tormented and bullied him as a child, and Cray, Miranda's son who falls for Orville in much the same was his mother does: tentative love mixed with self-protective fear.

Shem's fascinating account of Orville's cathartic one year and thirteen days in Columbia is a perfect example of how a return to our hometown can force us to face the past.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Uplifting, funny, redemptive...wonderful!, September 5, 2008

By 

Christopher Germer (Cambridge, MA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Spirit of the Place (Hardcover)

This is a beautifully written, multi-layered novel about a doctor who comes to terms with his past by returning to his hometown--a town "plagued by breakage." As he confronts his childhood pain, Dr. Orville Rose also discovers his inner goodness and strength, and starts to see the same in the difficult characters in is life, including a childhood bully and his deceased mother who floats by when he needs her the least. Dr. O's patients become the direct beneficiaries of his inner transformation.

Sam Shem, a Harvard psychiatrist, weaves a trail of human pain into a tale of faltering, and ultimately, illuminated healing. His main character is a modern-day Bodhisattva, bringing light into dark places. Although the book is published in the Kent State University series on literature and medicine, it seems to be equally at home in Buddhist psychology. It's a deeply compassionate book and I feel like a better person for having read it.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautifully done!, May 3, 2010

By 

Angelwolfe (Oregon) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Spirit of the Place (Hardcover)

When I first received this book, I wondered what I was thinking. I read science fiction and fantasy. I prefer dragons and spaceships to real world based fiction. With the exception of classic literature, my reading leans that way. Upon reading, I can definitively put this book, Spirit of the Place, in the Modern Classic category. I put books in this category when I have a hard time putting them down. And thus having a hard time waiting to pick them back up again.

When Dr. Orville Rose is informed of his mother's passing back home, he is living a nearly Utopian life in Europe with a yoga instructor and happily engaging himself as a physician in a high end spa. His mother has left him a good sized inheritance, but a condition comes with it. He reluctantly returns home to a town he never wanted to return to. He must stay in his mother's house for a year and thirteen days. To occupy his time, he assists the town doctor. During the time he spends there, he finds something he's been lacking (but thought he had) in his Utopian life.

As the imposed time draws near, he struggles to choose between two vastly different lives. I enjoyed following him on his journey of the soul. Even though it's been a while since i sat down and read Spirit of the Place, but it has stayed with me. Dr. Rose' journey into true healing of his spirit.