Cutting for Stone

Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese was written in 2009, his first novel. It is a saga, a family story full of mystery and hidden symbolism. Twin boys are born in Addis Ababa, at the mission hospital of the Catholic Matron, called Missing Hospital due to the incorrect pronunciation of the title Mission. It is a small place, with a few doctors and a few nurses, trying to offer the people of Addis Ababa, capital city of Ethiopia, what little nursing and doctor's care that can. The story begins in 1947 as Sister Mary Joseph Praise leaves her village in India with another nurse, Sister Anjali, nuns of the Carmelite Order of Madras who had taken the nursing courses at the Government General Hospital in Madras. On her voyage she loses her best friend to typhus and meets Thomas Stone, surgeon at Missing Hospital. She follows him there to do the Lord's work and stays for seven years. The mystery of Sister Mary Joseph Praise and her life story is slowly uncovered, and the story is told by one of the twin boys, Marion. The novel is written skillfully, dramatically, with much information about surgery and historical aspects of Ethiopia. Woven into the story of Missing Hospital are tales of a family's love for these twin brothers, and love and service to the hospital and it's mission. Told by an surgeon who is now living in California and teaching at Standford University School of Medicine, this book is an excellent example of American literature written gracefully by a citizen with a foreign background that makes this book all the more beautiful and rich.