Jacob M. Appel is a physician, attorney and bioethicist in New York City. He is the author of more than two hundred stories that have been published in major American literary journals including Missouri Review, Southwest Review and Virginia Quarterly Review. His fiction has been short-listed for the O. Henry Award, Best American Short Stories, and Pushcart Prize anthology on numerous occasions. His collection, Scouting for the Reaper, won the 2012 Hudson Prize and is forthcoming in 2013. Dr. Appel also writes about the nexus of law and medicine, contributing to The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle and many other leading periodicals. He is a graduate of Brown University, Harvard Law School, Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons, and the MFA Program in Creative Writing at New York University. This is his first novel and the winner of the 2012 Dundee International Book Prize.