Read The Medical Trilogy
It is 1965, and the Watts Riots have just ended when newlyweds Max and Jan King enter medical school.
As Max and Jan converge with other students in the Los Angeles County medical complex, neither has any idea that their foray into the world of medicine is about to test their inner strength, perseverance, and activist views in more ways than they ever could have imagined.
While civil unrest hangs over the country like a dark cloud, Max and Jan immerse themselves in their freshman year surrounded by cadavers, demanding professors, and chemistry labs. But the challenges of school soon threaten their happiness as a couple, unearthing a trove of doubt for Max, who is tempted to cheat not only in his marriage, but also on his exams. As Max grapples with an overwhelming fear of failure and the prospect of years of mind-numbing toil, he secretly wonders if the pursuit of prestige, affluence, and social status is really worth it after all.
In this medical drama, Jan and Max are each drawn to help the world overcome the vast challenges of the 1960s. Now only time will tell if Max will ever be able to shed his ambivalence over his choice to become a doctor and embrace his chosen life.
Max and Jan King start their internships at LA county hospital at the end of the sixties.
Max finds his way after four difficult years of medical school. Jan struggles with an abusive program. Max meets Abe Grant, an activist, the son of a communist and is drawn into far left politics. During the year conditions become untenable at the hospital. The young physicians on the internal medicine service hold a heal in protesting sub-standard care. In the end the establishment resident who chairs the Intern-Resident association co-opts them and wheedles a pay raise for everyone that takes the steam out of their activism. At the end of the year Max becomes chair of the activist group and learns that their pay raise came out of the hospital's clinical budget and has put them right back in the same mess.
The final installment of a medical trilogy, Stone Mother refers to the old Los Angeles County Hospital.
On entering residency training, a married couple carry their 1960s activism into the ‘70s. They struggle to balance overwhelming responsibilities with their ideals, attempting to reform the “system,” but ultimately it is their personal lives that suffer.
Max King is driven to make a better world. As a medical resident at L.A. County Hospital, he has daunting responsibilities. Jan King, his wife, is a resident in pediatrics. She’s a reluctant reformer.
On New Year’s Eve 1976, Max visits his best friend, Abe Grant, and pours out his soul about the last five years.
In 1970, Max and Jan King finished a difficult year of internship at the hospital. Max has transformed from an indifferent medical student into a leader of young activists, while Jan struggles with an abusive academic culture.
The hospital is short of funds and key staff. The activists hold a press conference to claim that twenty-five patients have died from inadequate care. Afterward, they’re subjected to a witch hunt to quash their complaints.
Meanwhile Jan is pregnant and delivers a baby with a medical complication that suggests paternity other than Max.
