Joseph A. Soldati (August 9, 2008)
Larry Rogers' Against the Grain is more than just an exciting diversion. This informative novel portrays an insider's view of contemporary hospital practices, of emergency-room and operating-room drama. Interwoven with a three-decades-long, mostly satisfying, love story, the novel focuses on the professional and personal life--the defeats, victories, horrors, and exuberances--of the highly gifted and skilled, often maverick, usually compassionate, neurosurgeon Grant Ravenel. If you regard "art" and "rocket-science" as activities you can't do, Against the Grain will require you to add "neurosurgery" to the list--and if you could do it, you would want to be a surgeon like Dr. Ravenel. The tense action scenes in the ER and OR where Ravenel attempts, though not always successfully, to save lives are first-rate. Rogers, of course, knows what he is talking about: he is an internationally known neurosurgeon who practiced for 27 years.
Mary Hunter Daly (August 23, 2008)
Against the Grain is the story of Dr. Grant Ravanel, an intense, brilliant neurosurgeon dedicated to the well-being of his patients above all. Retired neurosurgeon Larry Rogers relates in precise, sometimes harrowing detail the art and science of his profession while telling the intricately plotted personal story of a man often at odds with his environment, a doctor determined to transcend the deficiencies of the health care system and the politics of self-interest, to go "against the grain" whenever necessary for the benefit of his patients. In the process of vividly describing his hero's fears and desires, failures and triumphs, Dr. Rogers lays bare the inner workings of the medical world.
Terry W. Strecker (August 26, 2008)
Larry Rogers delivers a gem in Against the Grain. The title brilliantly prepares us for the compelling stories to follow.
There are at least three stories which Rogers weaves together in a wonderfully complex tapestry. Most readers will probably say that the lead story is the tale of Dr. Grant Ravenel, a brilliant neurosurgeon whose sole priority is the best interests of his patients, regardless of how this may put him in conflict with the institution which is the medical establishment. Dr. Ravenel dares to be a maverick and endures the consequences of not mouthing the company line. In addition, since Larry Rogers was himself a brilliant neurosurgeon for many years, Dr. Ravenel's story affords us a fascinating glimpse into the realities of neurosurgery. Readers will learn more about the grim details and complex difficulties of brain surgery than they might have ever imagined.
The second story is of Grant Ravenel's more than twenty year quest to be with the woman he loves. This story reveals the incomprehensible depths to which an abusive parent will stoop in trying to dominate his daughter. It very nearly costs Grant Ravenel his life, and certainly leaves him with two decades of personal sorrow and emptiness.
The third layer of the story, inextricably entwined with the others, reveals the ugliness and corruption which is often the reality of the business side of contemporary health care. We learn how the administrator of a for profit hospital manipulates hospital financial processes to enrich himself, oblivious to the consequences for the patients of the hospital. At its culmination, a patient nearly dies because the administrator has refused to purchase a CT scanner because the expenditure would adversely affect the balance sheet and jeopardize his pending sale of the hospital.
Grant Ravenel is the central figure in all three stories, in many ways a lone voice of reason and integrity in a corrupt world. The final outcome is not exactly a conventional good defeats evil ending, but it is a compelling parable reminding us that evil will indeed flourish unless good men speak out against it.
Larry Rogers dedicates the book to his late son, Wade, who also lived his life against the grain. It is a powerful story indeed.