What will health care look like in a year? Five years? Ten years? There's no debate that advances in science and technology will provide answers to many of mankind's current medical mysteries. But how will men and women with sometimes questionable ethics and morals use those new tools? Will the monetary rewards for those future doctors outweigh the good reasons for helping their family, friends, and complete strangers through the challenges of addressing the seemingly endless medical issues they will face?
Thomas Heric presents a unique vision of the future that tries to answer these questions in the form of a novel that bridges multiple genres of fiction. There are science fiction, adventure, and thriller threads mixed with one of the darkest hours in our history in the form of the Nazi agenda for a perfect race. At times I was reminded of Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park, a bit of Ira Levin's Boys from Brazil, and Robert Ludlum's novels involving Nazi plots into the cold war such as The Holcroft Covenant.
The story of The Healers begins in 2021 with Wesley Anderson's graduation from medical school. Wesley is a remarkable young man with a brilliant future in medicine and medical research. At his graduation party, he is approached by the Aesculapian Healers - a group of technologically and scientifically advanced doctors offering to cure all your ills but at an unbelievably high price. Torn between joining his father's medical practice and learning about the cutting edge of medicine, Wesley chooses to join them when he learns of his father's own health issues.
We tag along with Wesley as he learns more about the Aesculapian's plans for the future and their dark past. If a group of doctors has the power to heal those with incurable diseases, why couldn't they simply share that knowledge with the world? Wesley must wrestle with his conscience as he finds himself drawn into a web of secrets and lies. Can he save his family? His friends? The world?
Author Thomas Heric has been a practicing physician for more than 40 years, and it's obvious from the first few pages of the novel that he has a gift for not only using medical jargon correctly but translating it in such a way that the reader knows enough to not get bogged down by it. He's written for such television series as Medical Story, The Nurses, Chicago Hope, and Picket Fences. At times I felt the jargon took over the pages of this novel, but for the most part it was handled well.
Article comments