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Pre-order Patient 002
Patient 002 reviewed in April edition
of Booklist.
After writing piercing and lucid memoirs and poems about his struggles with a neurological disorder, Skloot
returns to fiction in his first novel in 10 years to ponder the anguished yet sometimes munificent revelations of illness,
while taking a few shots at the pharmaceutical industry. A helicopter pilot in Vietnam and an athletic and fiery opinion analyst
in Portland, Oregon, Sam is afflicted with a cruelly marauding virus that is obliterating his physical strength and mental
acuity. He signs up for a drug trial, hoping for a miracle cure, as does the hyperchatty Tracy, who seems to be getting better
until the program is abruptly aborted by the perhaps speciously named Physicians for Ethical Research. Sam, abetted by Jessica,
who is equally skilled in therapeutic massage and computer hacking, decides to fight back. Skloot turns an involving tale
of the mind-body puzzle with a magnetic cast of unusual characters into an archly funny caper, infusing this masterfully understated,
tender, and shrewd tale of love and healing with insight, compassion, and a touch of righteous indignation. —
Donna Seaman
Patient 002 Reviewed in the February 5th edition of Publishers Weekly!
Medical research
subjects get the
shaft before
striking back in
Skloot’s
latest, an amusing and
absorbing
novel that pits a motley crew of
Davids against
a callous corporate Goliath.
Sam Kiehl,
a 42-year-old Vietnam vet
and political
analyst, signs up for a doubleblind
placebo-controlled
study at an
esteemed
research center in Oregon after
being diagnosed
with herpes. The curiously
named pharmaceutical
company,
Physicians
for Ethical Research (PER), is
optimistic
over its promising drug, Zomalovir.
Sam soon
strikes up a romance with
his massage
therapist, Jessica Foster, but
after PER
goes bankrupt and cancels the
Zomalovir
study, the distraught subjects
(including
Sam) resort to desperate measures
to continue
receiving treatment.
Skloot, the
author of three novels, three
memoirs and
five volumes of poetry, treats
the complicated
and often absurd protocols
of drug studies
with an authoritative, compassionate
touch. The
balance of humor,
romance and
cold observation makes for a
commendable
yarn. (Apr.)
Publishers Weekly.com
Advance Praise for Patient 002, a Novel by Floyd Skloot
Available April 27, 2007
Paper, $19.95, 6x9, 288pp.
ISBN 978-0-9792091-6-1
“Patient 002 is an absolutely riveting novel. I'm not sure what I savored more: The way I was frenetically turning
the pages, or all I was learning about the ways drugs are tested on humans. This is a terrific book: A thriller that is at
once literary and spellbinding, and an exploration of the desperate hope we now bring to modern medicine”
—Chris
Bohjalian, bestselling author of Midwives and The Double Bind.
“With Patient 002, we are reminded once again that Floyd Skloot is one of America's finest underrated writers.
This is a novel of great sensitivity and depth, with characters who feel real and for whom we feel great compassion. So
much of Skloot's writings display a mastery of human pain and the way in which people live with damage and great dignity.
And yet the unpleasant symptoms of his fictional world are miraculously contained within stories that are engaging, humorous,
and life-affirming. If novels were meant to be agents of healing, then Patient 002 is the perfect pill for a house
call”
—Thane Rosenbaum, author of The Golems of Gotham, Second Hand Smoke, and Elijah Visible
“Captivating story-telling infused with taut, real-life drama. Floyd Skloot's characters get a grip on you and they
don't let go. A wonderful read.”
—Diana Abu-Jaber, author of Crescent and The Language
of Baklava
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From the author of In the Shadow of Memory, a memoir of living with brain damage that won the 2004 PEN Center USA Literary
Award and was a finalist for the 2003 Barnes & Noble Discover Award, comes a gripping novel about the battleground of human
medical research—told from the patient’s point of view.
At 41, Sam Kiehl was a successful political consultant, a long-distance runner and rock climber, the single father of a grown
son, and lover of a popular newspaper columnist. Then he contracted a virus that targeted his brain and left him totally
disabled. With few treatment options available, and his health continuing to worsen, Sam seizes upon the chance to offer
himself as a subject in the clinical field trial of a new drug, Zomalovir. He becomes “Patient 002" and joins a group
of patients from all walks of life who are similarly afflicted and similarly desperate. What happens to Sam, to the young
woman named Tracy Marsh with whom he is partnered, and to the others in his group, provides a sometimes shocking, sometimes
humorous, always dramatic picture of human medical research, a world seldom seen. As the research subjects respond—or
fail to respond—to their experimental treatment, as participating doctors and nurses observe, and as Physicians for Ethical
Research, the pharmaceutical company that developed the drug and operates the study, deals with harsh truths about the costs
and risks of conducting research, Patient 002 becomes a riveting tale of choices made and consequences faced at the center
of the illness experience.
Patient 002 is also a love story, as Sam discovers passion and romance in an unexpected places. It’s also a novel of
friendships forged in extreme circumstance, and of the human capacity for survival in the face of overwhelming obstacles.
“Beware of hopefulness,” a character in the novel says. Yet Patient 002, especially when the patients take matters
into their own hands in surprising ways, is a novel of hope, healing and astonishing actions.
About Floyd Skloot
Floyd Skloot's memoir, In the Shadow of Memory, [University of Nebraska Press, 2003], won the 2004 PEN Center USA Award
in Creative Nonfiction, the 2004 Independent Publishers Book Award in Creative Nonfiction, and the 2003 Oregon Book Award
in creative nonfiction. That book was one of three Finalists for the 2003 Barnes & Noble Discover Award and the 2004 PEN
Award in the Art of the Essay; it was named one of the Best Books of the Year by The Chicago Tribune; was a Book Sense
76 recommended title—and received overwhelming and unconditional praise.
Skloot's new memoir, A World of Light, was published recently. Also a poet and novelist, Skloot has had work anthologized
in Best American Essays [twice], Best American Science Writing [twice], The Art of the Essay, and the
2004 Pushcart Prize Anthology. He has been featured in Poets & Writers, among other publications, and his work
has also appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s, Poetry, Boulevard, The Hudson Review,
Southern Review, Sewanee Review, Georgia Review, Virginia Quarterly Review and most of the leading literary journals in
this country, as well as in Ireland, England, Wales, and Australia.
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Contact: Christopher D. White: chrispoet@gmail.com (330) 622-2928
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