Ghost Dancing - Paperback

by William Wesley (Author)

In 1994, a little girl becomes deathly ill on a reservation in the shadows of the eastern Sierra Nevada, spiritual homeland of the Paiute nation. Hunter Liddell, a young doctor on duty in a remote ER, is unable to stabilize Lilly Garcia. A winter snowstorm prevents ambulances from reaching Inyo District Hospital. Hunter makes the fateful decision to have Lilly's parents drive her to the closest children's hospital; more than a hundred miles away.

Four Stars from ForeWord Clarion Review: Andi Diehn - "Health care is on the minds of most Americans...as the debate about who should pay for what ebbs and flows across the country. Physician William Wesley addresses the human side of the dilemma in his novel about a two-year-old Paiute girl who arrives at a poorly staffed emergency room in rural California...Wesley writes with obvious knowledge about, and passion for, the inner workings of the health care system. The scenes that take place in the emergency room are gripping and authentic, and that same narrative drive continues in the courtroom. His characters are thoroughly imagined and well balanced...Ghost Dancing is an entertaining, smart book about an issue that touches us all."

Five Stars from One of 100 Most Influential People in Healthcare - Angela Gardner: "Based on a true story, it is a compelling portrayal of the real-life consequences of conflicting priorities in medicine, business, and national health policy. The characters in this novel are real - from the broken-down convict still able to put his medical training to good use to the poor Native American child living in the wrong place at the wrong time and everyone in between - and their stories portray our health care system at its worst. Part medical novel, part love story, part tale of redemption, this novel is a page-turner from beginning to end."

Robert Rosenbloom MD, Past President of the California ACEP: "Ghost Dancing...is a great story that weaves the challenges of man, the human struggle and redemption."

William Wesley, award-winning physician, advocate, and author, offers a complex and moving account of how the death of one child transforms everyone and everything that was part of her life. Ghost Dancing is a tribute to tens of thousands emergency physicians who changed the course of hundreds of millions of American lives, delivering the best care our system had to offer, under circumstances that often threatened their own well-being. It dramatizes the ongoing conflict in America between health care as a fundamental human right and a privilege at a price neither patients nor providers truly control. It is also reveals the alarming disparity between big-city emergency care, as seen on TV, and sparse access in rural areas.

Author Biography

William Wesley graduated from the literature program in the College of Creative Studies in Santa Barbara, California, where he was mentored by the celebrated CCS founder, Marvin Mudrick. He attended the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California and trained in emergency medicine at Harbor/UCLA. While in medical school, his first novel, Doctorcito, was purchased by Jeremy Tarcher, now an imprint of the Penguin Group. The author, whose family name is Fields, has published a number of peer-reviewed topics in leading medical journals in the US and served in a variety of leadership roles in emergency medicine, as well as national advisory panels on health care access, coverage, and quality. For many years he has served as an associate clinical professor at the University of California, Irvine. He recently retired from clinical practice in Vituity, the largest acute care partnership in the US, including 26 years of service as chair or board member.