Gemini
Carol Cassella, 2014
Simon & Schuster
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781451627930
Summary
A stranger’s life hangs in the balance. What if you had the power to decide if she lives or dies?
Dr. Charlotte Reese works in the intensive care unit of Seattle’s Beacon Hospital, tending to patients with the most life-threatening illnesses and injuries. Her job is to battle death—to monitor erratic heartbeats, worry over low oxygen levels, defend against infection and demise.
One night a Jane Doe is transferred to her care from a rural hospital on the Olympic Peninsula. This unidentified patient remains unconscious, the victim of a hit and run. As Charlotte and her team struggle to stabilize her, the police search for the driver who fled the scene.
Days pass, Jane’s condition worsens, and her identity remains a mystery. As Charlotte finds herself making increasingly complicated medical decisions that will tie her forever to Jane’s fate, her usual professional distance evaporates. She’s plagued by questions: Who is Jane Doe? Why will no one claim her? Who should decide her fate if she doesn’t regain consciousness—and when?
Perhaps most troubling, Charlotte wonders if a life locked in a coma is a life worth living.
Enlisting the help of her boyfriend, Eric, a science journalist, Charlotte impulsively sets out to uncover Jane Doe’s past. But the closer they get to the truth, the more their relationship is put to the test. It is only when they open their hearts to their own feelings toward each other—and toward life itself—that Charlotte and Eric will unlock Jane Doe’s shocking secret, and prepare themselves for a miracle.
Filled with intricate medical detail and set in the breathtaking Pacific Northwest, Gemini is a riveting and heartbreaking novel of moral complexity and emotional depth. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1956-57
• Where—Dallas, Texas, USA
• Education—B.A., Duke University; M.D.,Baylor College of Medicine
• Currently—lives on Bainbridge Island, Washington
Carol Cassella is a practicing anesthesiologist and novelist. She was a closet writer for years before blending medicine and fiction in her first novel, Oxygen, the story of an anesthesiologist tangled in the aftermath of an operating room catastrophe. Oxygen was an Indie Best Pick for July 2008, and selected as one of the best first novels of 2008 by The Library Journal. The novel has become a national bestseller and was released as a trade paperback in June, 2009.
Carol grew up in Dallas, Texas and graduated from Duke University with a degree in English Literature. After working in publishing for several years, Carol decided to pursue her fascination with all the weird and wonderful ways humans behave and misbehave by studying medicine. She initially intended to become a psychiatrist, but when she couldn’t separate the body and the soul she veered into internal medicine and then, six years later, into anesthesiology. She is board certified in both internal medicine and anesthesiology. Prior to writing fiction, Carol wrote about global public health issues in the developing world for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Carol now lives on Bainbridge Island, WA with her husband Steve and their two sets of twins. She enjoys hiking and cross country skiing in the North Cascades. (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
[A] riveting, suspenseful story, full of vivid characters and stirring reflections on medical and genetic issues…. Cassella is a gifted writer, gorgeously animating her landscapes and the forces of nature, underlining her theme that even medicine cannot save her characters from mortality.
Seattle Times
An intensive-care doctor in Seattle grappling with her stagnant relationship and ticking biological clock, Charlotte Reese becomes engrossed in the case of a Jane Doe delivered to her hospital comatose after a highway hit-and-run.... A book at turns heartwarming and heartbreaking, it invites us to accept, if nothing else, that the only way to live is to "cling to every moment even as you into the next.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) The book prompts many questions: Who is Jane Doe? Why has no one come forward to identify her? How long can Charlotte keep this patient alive before an appointed guardian decides that it would be in the woman's best interests to let her die?.... Informed by her work as a doctor, Casella's...offers deepening mysteries to keep the reader turning the pages. —Sheila M. Riley, Smithsonian Inst. Libs., Washington, DC
Library Journal
[A] compelling look at the collision of a physician’s professional and personal lives.... Readers will quickly perceive the connection between Raney and the Jane Doe in Charlotte’s ICU, but they’ll be surprised to discover that the women share another link. A uniquely involving read. —Kristine Huntley
Booklist
...the lives of a doctor and her critically injured patient intertwine in unexpected ways.... Dr. Charlotte [Reese] embarks on a determined quest to solve the puzzle of how this Jane Doe found herself in her present condition. Readers may well overlook Cassella's frequently interjected bromides about love...since this engaging medical mystery makes far more compelling points about economics and sociology.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Why does Charlotte feel such a strong sense of responsibility for Jane Doe? How does she balance her protective feelings for Jane with her practical understanding of Jane’s prognosis?
2. From the moment she first sees Bo, Raney is acutely aware of the differences in their circumstances. How does her sensitivity about her background affect their relationship over the years? In what ways do they have more in common than she thinks? Why is their childhood attachment so enduring?
3. Charlotte sees her job as giving nature "as much time as possible" (117). In practice, what does that mean? How does it influence her feelings about Jane’s care and the appointment of a guardian ad litem?
4. How does the small town of Quentin, with its natural beauty and financial struggles, shape Raney’s life? In what ways does she identify as a small town girl, and in what ways does she resent that role?
5. Charlotte and Eric’s relationship is haunted by her desire to have a child, and his reluctance to do so. Why is the subject so difficult for them to discuss? Why does Charlotte feel they have stalled?
6. What reasons does Raney give for marrying Cleet? Would she have made the same decision if she were not pregnant? How is her understanding of love and loyalty shaped by her marriage to him?
7. How does Eric’s awareness of his neurofibromatosis, and the brushes with death it caused, influence his life? What choices does he make as a result? What boundaries does he lie down? Are his boundaries intended for his own protection or for others’?
8. As a child, Raney makes do with scavenged house paint for her art. How does that same make-do attitude manifest in her adult life?
9. What is the significance of Raney burning her paintings when her grandfather’s farm is sold? Why is this a turning point in her life as much as her grandfather’s?
10. Does Charlotte go too far by seeking David out and by trying to uncover Jake’s paternity? Does her involvement with Raney compromise her objectivity?
11. When she was a child, Raney's grandfather taught her to light a campfire "with one match and her own wits" (229). Does Raney take his lesson about self-sufficiency to heart? At what points does she fail to follow his advice?
12. What prompts Raney to marry David? Why does she ignore her growing misgivings and stay with him? Do you think David was responsible for the hit-and-run?
13. Why do you think the author chose Gemini, the zodiac sign represented by twins, as the title of the novel? How does she develop the theme established by the title? What characters or events are "twinned"?
14. Gemini contains several mysteries: Jane Doe’s identity, whether the hit-and-run was accidental or intentional, Jake’s parentage, and others. Was there a particular revelation that you found most surprising or satisfying? What devices did the author use to maintain suspense?
15. Discuss the role of genetics in the novel. How does Eric’s "fatal flaw" link the characters? Eric wrote in his editorial that knowledge of your genetic code could be more damaging than helpful; is that true for Jake? Would you rather know if your genetics carried a "fatal flaw" or not?
16. Gemini raises challenging questions about our fear of death and our willingness to confront or discuss it. Did you react differently to Jane Doe’s situation than you did to that of Raney’s grandfather? How would you answer the question that Eric poses to Charlotte: "Should quantity of life always trump quality?" (9) Did reading Gemini stir you to look more closely at your own feelings about death?
(Questions issued by publisher.)