White Hot Light

Twenty-Five Years in Emergency Medicine

By: Frank Huyler

Narrated by: Gary Bennett

Another “pitch-perfect book of short essays” (New York Times Book Review) from the acclaimed author of Blood of Strangers, this one exploring the contemporary practice of medicine from the perspective of a doctor with 25 years of experience in the ER.

In the late 1990s, a young physician in Albuquerque, New Mexico, published a stunning memoir of his experiences in the highly charged world of the ER. Presented in a series of powerful, poetic vignettes, The Blood of Strangers became an instant classic.

Now, over two decades later, Dr. Frank Huyler delivers another dispatch from the trenches—this time from the perspective of middle age. In portraits visceral, haunting, sometimes surreal, Huyler reveals the gritty reality of medicine practiced on the razor’s edge between life and death.

From the doomed, like the Iraq vet with a brain full of shrapnel, to the self-destructive, like the young woman who inserts a sewing needle into her heart, to the transcendent, like the homeless Navajo artist whose sketches charm the nurses, Huyler assembles a profound mosaic of human suffering and grace, complemented by episodes from his personal life: the hail that fell the night his wife gave birth, his drive through a snowstorm to see his father in a Colorado ER, the beautiful wedding of his childhood friend with terminal cancer. Melding hard-earned wisdom with a poet’s crystalline vision, Huyler evokes the awesome burden of responsibility, the exhaustion, the relief of a costume disco nurse party, and those rare occasions when the confluence of luck and science yield, in the author’s words, “moments of breathtaking greatness.”

White Hot Light offers an unforgettable portrait of a field that illuminates society at its most vulnerable, and its most elemental.

a worthwhile listen

An accurate portrayal of emergency medicine and life. Reality of what it's like and very poetic at the same time.

Captures the pull and push of today’s emergency room.

I’d been wanting to read a book about life as an emergency physician to get a glimpse into my daughter-in-law’s world. This was an outstanding book. It was encouraging to hear Dr Huyler’s thoughts on his life’s work. He is humble, kind, analytical, self-evaluative and an outstanding role model for his fellow doctors. I just hope, should I ever find myself in an ER, that I’m fortunate enough to be seen by someone of Dr Huyler’s expertise and compassion.

Even Better than The Blood of Strangers

When someone gave me the Blood of Strangers, Frank Huyler's first book of short stories about his experiences in emergency medicine, I almost didn't read it. I thought I could never enjoy a book about emergency medicine. I was so wrong, and White Hot Light is even better. This is not "Emergency Room" or "Gray's Anatomy." It's never sensational. It's quiet, and sometimes melancholy as the author looks back over the years, not just in medicine but also as a youth living in far-flung places with his family. Each story is a small gem. One story in particular was a beautiful bookend to a story from Blood of Strangers. In this recent book, he had to coax the diagnosis of AIDS out of a young doctor who was too young to have seen and experienced it as an epidemic, as Huyler had in his youth, and as he portrayed in a heartbreaking story in his previous work. The performance was perfect. Highly recommend.

Engrossing Read

I worked with the author in the ER many years ago, and I’m thrilled to see he is still writing. The chapter called “the gun show” ripped my heart out. So tough to read, but I think it should be mandatory reading for anyone who wants to own a gun. Thanks Dr Huyler !

The cherry picker changed me for a while...

Throughout, Huyler succeeds in becoming emotionally wrapped up in these people’s stories of disease, injury, mental illness, and addiction — their fights to survive and, sometimes, to die. The essay “Mercy,” in particular, demonstrates how complicated a physician’s role as healer can be. In “The Sleeper,” Huyler and his team are faced with a patient having a heart attack. They act swiftly and save the man’s life.“Glory, like failure, like so many of the black stories, is private and small in medicine. This is an excellent read and not for the faint or person who is aversive to gore. Read.