In this memoir, a newly certified New York City ear, nose, and throat specialist goes to Thailand to help the underprivileged and learn about the world and himself.

As one of five sons of a divorced mother, Moss grew up in the mean streets of the Bronx with little reason to expect that he’d someday get a degree in medicine. However, after overcoming several roadblocks and changes of mind, he committed himself to long years of medical study. Even after achieving his goal of becoming an otolaryngological surgeon, he was faced with an agonizing choice—set up a practice and start making good money or travel to a less-developed country and assist those in desperate need. Urged on by his interest in Eastern religion and a timely fortune cookie at a Chinese restaurant (“Do not forsake your dreams for material security”), he took a job at a clinic in northern Thailand. Young and inexperienced, he dealt with horrific cancers and infections and an overwhelming lack of resources. However, he was deeply impressed with his colleagues’ resourcefulness and his patients’ calm acceptance of their conditions. He also fell in love with the leisurely pace of Thailand, where people walked more slowly than they did in New York. As he continued his practice in Nepal, India, and Bangladesh, Richard learned from his patients, other native people, and expatriates, and he even unexpectedly got married along the way. Overall, Moss (Matilda’s Triumph, 2013, etc.) has constructed a moving and persuasive memoir that will draw the reader in from the very first chapter. By interspersing italicized flashbacks of his early life among his evolving experiences in foreign lands, he adds texture and depth to both storylines. His portraits of the people he meets, his chronicle of his spiritual development, and his anecdotes about occasional culture clashes are all vivid and compelling. Some of the clinical and surgical scenes are grisly, but many also have the urgency and drama of an episode of ER—if not the pat, happy ending that such fiction often provides.

An engaging account of a three-year odyssey of medicine and personal growth in the East.

A medical doctor explores his mother’s life and mystifying death in this memoir of grief and remembrance.

Moss’ book begins on an otherwise typical September day in 1998, when his mother suddenly displayed the classic signs of a stroke—slurred speech, drooping facial muscles, and strange mannerisms. Despite the Indiana physician’s professional expertise, it took him a moment to realize what had happened. After a trip to the hospital, he was equally nonplussed by the casual attitude of her caretakers toward her condition, as he knew his mother “had few risk factors.” In this book, he blends a medical case study with a memoir as he explores the causes of his mother’s stroke in vignettes that celebrate her life and reflect on his own grieving process. As an otolaryngologist (better known as an ENT) with a private practice who’s authored multiple peer-reviewed articles, Moss approaches his story as a case study, piecing together modern medical research to explore the origins, and potential cures, of his mother’s stroke. Backed by a scholarly bibliography, he gives lay readers a rare glimpse into the mind of a medical practitioner as he draws his diagnosis from disparate sources. As engaging as the book’s medical mystery is, its greatest strength lies in Moss’ grappling with questions that science can’t answer. The devout Jewish author explores universal questions related to belief in a loving God in a world that’s full of pain. In one particularly poignant passage, the book touches upon the Mourner’s Kaddish, a prayer that paradoxically centers on praising the deity without ever mentioning the deceased, “as if to emphasize that even under the greatest duress, the most painful loss, our devotion to God [is] not diminished.” In periodic vignettes, the author also presents a chronicle of his mother’s life and the sacrifices she made for her children: “I didn’t realize how far inside myself it all went,” Moss writes in the prologue, “how deeply my mother had reached.”

A touching work that celebrates a life and mourns its loss.