To Quit This Calling: Firsthand Tales of a Pediatric Pathologist - Softcover

Waldstein, Gail

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0977127222 ISBN 13: 9780977127221

Publisher: Ghost Road Press, 2005

Synopsis

With mischievious wit and incisive prose, former pediatric pathologist Gail Waldstein painstakingly dissects her life and herself while commenting on unforseen obstacles and lifelines--two ex-husbands, the rigorous and often sexist medical culture of the 1960s, and a number of unwavering, lifelong friendships. This is a memoir that weighs relationships and prejudices, charting the bittersweet and harsh realities of Waldstein's creative rebirth as an award-winning writer. She uncoils the dark truths that come with self-discovery, while showing how loyal friendships and a fierce survival instinct helped her overcome adversity, finally allowing her to achieve contentment and peace. Waldstein has won numerous awards for her writing, including finalist positions for the Iowa Review Prize and The Faulkner. She lives and writes in Denver.

About this title

From the Publisher:

In Gail Waldstein’s new book,we become enveloped in the mind of an accomplished physician and writer, mother and lover, devotionist and atheist, rape victim and madwoman, best friend and confidante. And in the act of reading this memoir, we agree to experience Waldstein’s roller coaster life.

A series of intricate and honest autobiographical essays reveals the rich and haunting life of a woman who has overcome dark family secrets and raw heartbreaks; Waldstein is a woman who courageously stood up for herself against both sexism and abuse. Despite these struggles, we discover again and again a person who is grateful to be alive, one who ends each retelling of her history with the belief that life really does reward goodness and that there is abundant goodness to be had in life.

Waldstein’s writing style is punctuated with segments of frank and conversant asides that lend the impression we have been by her side through thick and thin. Yet there is an underlying complexity of issues relating to medical ethics, motherhood, dating, and faith that make this more than a mere recollection. The essays contain an undercurrent of psychological dis-ease that accompanies the rituals and roles that were imposed on women of Waldstein’s generation, expectations and rites that were supposed to be undertaken without question or complaint. Add to this mindset the unyielding rites of passage in 1960s medicine, and Waldstein’s journey to her fully-realized self becomes all the more remarkable.

Without being glib and with a talent for weaving time and memory, this memoir exhibits a distinctly optimistic flair that leaves us hopeful about what can happen, that life can improve us and conversely, we can improve our own lives with strength and grace. Waldstein believes that what we do makes a difference, and we leave her memoir emboldened with a touch of her optimism and resilience, perhaps with a small wish that our own mothers and sisters and daughters might be fortunate enough to possess some of Waldstein’s brilliance and determination.

About the Author:

Waldstein has won numerous awards for her writing, including finalist positions for the Iowa Review Prize and The Faulkner. She lives and writes in Denver.

About this edition

• Publisher: Ghost Road Press
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0977127222
• ISBN 13: 9780977127221
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 236