The Strength of Bone

"In supple, beautiful prose, Lucie Wilk recounts a doctor's struggle with technology and faith, and with the mysteries of death and love ... "The Strength of Bone" is an extraordinary look at the clash of worlds."--Annabel Lyon, author of "The Golden Mean" and "The Sweet Girl."

At the hospital in Blantyre, Malawi, Dr. Bryce is learning to predict the worst. Racing heart: septic infection, probably malaria. "Send Iris for saline." Shortness of breath: TB. "Roll him to the ward." Round swellings, rashes with dimpled centers, the small rough patches on a child's foot: HIV. "Iris, say something." "Translate." "Give him a bath."

And then there's sleeplessness, rationed energy, misdirected grief, a censuring of hope: the doctor's disease. Iris sees that one all the time.

Henry Bryce has come to Blantyre to exhaust the guilt he feels over his daughter's death, but he can't adjust to the hopelessness that surrounds him. He relies increasingly upon Sister Iris's steady presence. Yet it's not until an accident brings them both to a village outpost that Henry realizes the personal sacrifices Iris has made for her medical training, or that Iris in turn comes to fathom the depth of Henry's grief.

"The Strength of Bone" is the story of a North American doctor, a Malawian nurse, and the crises that push both of them to the brink of collapse. With deftly interwoven narratives and a pathological eye for detail, novelist and medical doctor Lucie Wilk brings to life the ambition, the self-destructiveness, and the ultimate resiliency inherent in African relief workers--and shows, in a place where knowledge can frustrate as often as it heals, that true strength requires the flexibility to let go.

Lucie Wilk practices medicine in London, England. Her short fiction has been nominated for several Canadian prizes. This is her first novel.