The Healing Book
A beautiful and uplifting short story collection featuring thirteen unique journeys of self-discovery and healing.
The Healing Book is a collection of short stories about characters searching for meaning as they navigate the complexities and absurdities of modern life.
In "Beyond Medicine," a neurosurgeon travels to Peru hoping an ayahuasca healing ceremony will cure her depression. In "The Good Parent," a young woman rejects her overprotective mother's style of parenting and tries a new philosophy: free-range parenting. In "Going Through the Motions," a middle-aged man searches for ways to manage his rebellion against the self-help industry and the conventional values of society.
A theoretical physicist in "Searching for Meaning in the Stars" writes a memoir about overcoming an existential crisis. A student filmmaker in "Cubicle" discovers loneliness, absurdity, and cruelty in the halls of Corporate America-but also finds his artistic voice. In "A Case of Aphantasia," a man's aphantasia (lack of a mind's eye) is cured in therapy using a new digital technology, but then he's pulled into a virtual reality from which he is powerless to leave. In "Trail Magic," a burned-out knowledge worker struggling with depression and identity issues finds her way to contentment and freedom through therapy and the Appalachian Trail. And in the title story, "The Healing Book," a physician attempts to cure his wife from terminal cancer by writing a book capable of healing her body.
The Healing Book is a thought-provoking collection by a soulful New England writer with a deep background in science and medicine. In this inspiring book, follow characters who are on journeys of psychological, emotional, and spiritual healing. Each unique story of transformation imparts wisdom, psychological insight, and personal growth.
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Dustin Grinnell is the author of The Genius Dilemma, Without Limits, and The Empathy Academy. He holds an MFA in fiction from the Solstice MFA Program, an MS in physiology from Penn State, and a BA in psychobiology from Wheaton College (MA). He grew up in the White Mountains of New Hampshire and lives in Winthrop, MA. See more of his work at www.dustingrinnell.com.
"A moving collection of stories about people desperately trying to make sense of their world and find balance, understanding, some semblance of harmony, set in a time when the world only seems to make less sense with each passing day-here's a rare book that just might offer a little light in the darkness."
-David Yoo, author of The Choke Artist
"Dustin Grinnell's stories bring you along on richly imagined, transformative journeys far reaching in both geography and emotion. Whether coursing through the travails of illness, grief, morality, parenting or career ennui, these stories hold up mirrors to characters' lives, and will surely leave you with new found insight into your own."
-Jeffrey H. Millstein, MD, FACP, Regional Medical Director, Penn Primary Care NJ/Bucks County
"Until I read Dustin Grinnell's short story, "A Case of Aphantasia," I had no idea such a condition existed-that there was a name for my own visual darkness. His writing is like that: he names things that weren't in the forefront of your mind until he showed you what they mean to you. He's quirky, intellectual and fearless, and his stories will make you wonder and ponder and sometimes catch your breath."
-Sandra Scofield, author of The Last Draft: A Novelist's Guide to Revision
"As a physician, I turn to literature for my continuing professional education. Textbooks and journals, for the most part, are technical manuals that tell us much about diseases but little about the people who suffer with them. Dustin Grinnell deftly draws us into these short stories as his characters strive for insight and healing. I marveled at his grasp of the complexities of the protagonists and felt each was real and important. We give lip service to how our patients' problems are biopsychosocial-yet in these stories we are drawn into their lives as they enlighten us with their existential quests. The Healing Book can make us better, more curious, more empathetic physicians, patients, and finally, people."
-David J. Elpern, MD, dermatologist and Founder of Cell to Soul Blog
Reviews: Independent Book Review, Literary Titan, Midwest Book Review
