'Cutting for Stone: A Novel' by Abraham Verghese

In lesser hands, melodrama would be irresistible; the peace is vulnerable and, yes, it is shattered, but Verghese has already created characters with integrity that will not be shattered by any event. The young girl both brothers love is given a violent clitoridectomy by her mother. That violence slides in its serpentine way through several lives, but it does not shatter the purity that shelters the twins -- a purity passed from mother to surrogate mother to the children she raised so tenderly. In this and other scenarios Verghese makes the point in his gentle way that violence begets violence; that fanaticism is born from pain.

When Ghosh is dying, he asks Marion to go to the United States to find his father and give him a message from his old friend. Marion leaves during wartime, sick of Africa, and lands in a Catholic clinic in New York. He eventually finds his father, a successful surgeon with a broken heart. His father and brother (whose betrayal with the young woman they both loved still stings) save his life. This is not giving too much away because "Cutting for Stone" (a phrase taken from the Hippocratic oath: "I will not cut for stone, even for patients in whom the disease is manifest") owes its goodness to something greater than plot. It would not be possible to give away the story by simply telling you what happens. Verghese creates this story so lovingly that it is actually possible to live within it for the brief time one spends with this book. You may never leave the chair.

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susan.reynolds@latimes.com