Frank J. Edwards was born in Rochester New York. In 1968 he entered the US Army and served a tour in Vietnam as a helicopter pilot. He received a BA with honors in English from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill then attended medical school at the University of Rochester, graduating with an MD in 1979. In 1989 he received an MFA in writing from Warren Wilson College in Swannanoa, NC. After practicing for a decade in North Carolina, he returned to the Rochester, area in 1990 where he remains in active practice.
He has published a number of poems and short stories in literary magazines including Carolina Quarterly and The Virginia Quarterly Review, along with numerous medical articles. In 1988, Henry Holt published his first non-fiction book, Medical Malpractice: Solving the Crisis. His second non-fiction book, The M & M Files: Morbidity and Mortality Rounds in Emergency Medicine was published by Hanley & Belfus in 2002 and has become a standard text in emergency medicine.
For the past thirteen years he has taught creative writing seminars to medical students at the U of R. In 2004, the University of Rochester Press published his collection of poems and short stories, It’ll Ease the Pain.
Final Mercy is his first novel. He is married to a former emergency nurse from Canada and lives with his family on Lake Ontario near Rochester.
You can visit his website at www.frankjedwards.com.
Q: Thank you for this interview, Frank. Can you tell everyone what your latest book, Final Mercy, is all about?
Frank: Thanks for the opportunity to share some time with you and your readers. Final Mercy is set in the New Canterbury University Medical Center in Upstate New York State, where Dr. Jack Forester finds himself in a political battle with the charismatic Bryson Witner, who’d been appointed interim dean after the previous dean died in a cave-diving accident . . . or what seemed to be an accident. Jack’s long-standing dream is to modernize the emergency department and train new emergency doctors, but Witner has begun throwing up roadblocks, and the reason appears to be Jack’s refusal to endorse Witner’s ambitions to become the permanent dean. Though a great many people have fallen for Witner’s charm and energy, Jack never liked his manipulative style.
Very few of Witner’s admirers know that he’d suffered a psychotic breakdown during his previous job at Harvard, and not a soul realizes he’s coming unhinged again. The pot really begins boiling when Jack’s mentor—the venerable Dr. James Gavin—makes an apparent suicide attempt by “jumping” off a foot bridge. Jack’s shock evolves into horror when he discovers that Gavin had been growing suspicious of Witner’s possible involvement in the unexpected death of yet another New Canterbury physician.
Old Dr. Gavin survives the fall, but winds up comatose thanks to an intern’s tragic blunder in the ER. Witner deftly focuses the blame on Jack and relieves him of his job. Then the lovely journalist, Zellie Andersen, who’d begun sensing there was something more than a little odd about Bryson Witner—and with whom Jack is falling in love—doesn’t show up for a date.
That’s probably telling enough, except to say that never in his life did Jack Forester expect to be standing on the prow of a boat in the middle of the night in a blizzard scanning the water with a searchlight.
Q: I understand Final Mercy is your first book. How does it feel to be published for the first time? Would you like to tell us how you got your book published?
Frank: I’ve had work published in literary magazines and medical journals before, and I’ve also had the good fortune to have a couple of non-fiction books and a collection of stories and poems published. But a first novel marks a special point in a writer’s life. I think novels are a much greater challenge to write than non-fiction works of equal length. Not only are you making up characters and a plot, you have to be much more mindful of things like point-of-view, pacing, dialogue and the balance of scene and summary that are typically of lesser concern in non-fiction. It feels wonderful to have Final Mercy out in the world and being well received. Novels take a huge time commitment, and unlike non-fiction where you can get a publishing contract on the basis of a good proposal, most novels are written on pure hope.
I came up with the initial outline of Final Mercy about eight years ago, and the road to publication has been so tortuous that finally holding a copy in my hand was almost anticlimactic. The rough draft took a year, after which followed several years of many big and little re-drafts and polishing, until I had something to run by an agent. After a year of rejection letters, one of the smaller independent houses I’d sent a query to many months before—Zumaya Publications—asked to see the manuscript. They accepted it, and Final Mercy then spent almost two years in a prepublication queue, awaiting the final edit.
I have to say that the last leg—the final editing—was the most exciting aspect of the entire journey. Liz Burton, the owner and editor of Zumaya, turned out to be a splendid editor and mentor. We did the work on-line in real time through Google Documents over a period of several weeks, and I can’t tell you how much I learned about craft.
It’s interesting how you spend all those years aiming to create something designed to make readers devour it in the shortest time possible. But I would do the whole thing again in a heartbeat—in fact, am doing it right now with a sequel.
Q: What compels you to write medical thrillers? Have you ever thought about writing other genres?
Frank: Physicians devotes so much of their life to the subject of medicine that writing medical thrillers becomes a natural path to a doctor-writer bent in the direction of suspense. It would be a shame to waste all that research. There’s also a ready-made audience out there these days, thanks to author-practitioners like Cook, Palmer and Gerritsen, who demonstrate time and again how the world of medicine is a rich vein to mine for plots, drama and characters.
My own taste in novels is very eclectic and inclusive. My initial impulse was to write a comedic literary novel with magical realist elements, but when trying to make a start I gravitated towards the plotting of mysteries. This used to irk me, but finally I just embraced it and things fell together. For me there’s also a juicily cathartic element in writing about the medical profession. Rather than just air my frustrations in the coffee shop, I can dramatize them on the page. I can illustrate what’s good, illuminate what isn’t, and poke fun at absurdities along the way. There’s a certain tongue-in-cheek element at times in Final Mercy, such as when one of the minor characters seriously proposes a ridiculous idea for a clinical study, and it is found to be intriguing.
Q: Can you tell us more about your main characters and what part they play in making the book come together?
Frank: Jack Forester is an emergency doctor in his mid-thirties, who wants desperately to bring modern emergency medicine to his stodgy alma mater medical school. It’s his vision and his quest. He is creative, witty and courageous. His parents died in a plane crash when he was in his teens, leaving behind only Jack and his autistic brother. To become a physician he had to struggle and sacrifice, and when the book begins he still hasn’t found a woman to share his life with. He gives most of time and passion to his work—not to mention the fact he has become the caretaker and protector of his mentally handicapped brother. Jack’s desire to put New Canterbury on the map with regards to having the best ER possible is one of Final Mercy’s major driving forces.
Zellie Andersen, the woman he falls for, is also a work-obsessed loner in her own way. She contracted meningitis as a child and not only lost part of her hearing, but her mother died in the same epidemic. With a rich inner life, however, she turned to writing and had a well-received novel published when she was still in college. She moved to New York City after graduation, but writer’s block stalled her career. Because of her childhood losses, she is unable to access the part of her mind where her best stories lie, and she turned to journalism and teaching to survive. Her former lover also discouraged Zellie’s creative projects in favor of his own.
But she has been a free woman now for a couple of years when she receives a commission from an in-flight magazine to do an article about the wonderful things being done at New Canterbury Medical Center by the new interim dean, Dr. Bryson Witner. Jack runs into Zellie one day at the hospital and instantly knows he’s seen her before, but he can’t remember for the life of him when and where. (I won’t give it away).
Zellie’s hearing loss has made her extraordinarily sensitive to the nuances of other people’s facial expressions. As soon as she meets Dr. Witner she senses a disconnect between his inner life and outer self. She will be the first to suspect he’s involved in the bad things going on at New Canterbury, and she will pay the price for her intuition. To save herself she must draw upon the last ounce of her native intelligence and courage.
Dr. Bryson Winter is in his late forties and has a dark secret. He started his medical career as a rising star at Harvard, publishing papers left and right, garnering a national reputation in the field of geriatric endocrinology. But then something happened. One day in the back of a dusty Cambridge bookshop, he began hearing voices from inside the pages of an old, blank, leather-bound journal he happened to pick up. The voices belong to a secret society and they reveal to him his special mission in life. Soon thereafter Witner’s behavior on the wards grew increasingly bizarre and concerning, and he was hospitalized. The diagnosis: an acute schizophrenic break. Though he recovers with the help of medication and psychotherapy, his supervisors at the Mass General gently think it best he seek a fresh start elsewhere.
Well recommended and still a very hot property in the world of academic medicine, Witner was recruited to New Canterbury, which being off the beaten track and notorious for its winters, has always had to compete hard for good people. By dint of his brilliance, charisma and ruthlessness, Witner quickly rises to a position of power, where individuals like Jack Forester and Zellie Andersen are simply minor obstacles to be brushed aside as convenience (and the secret society) dictates.
Q: Interesting that you teach creative writing at seminars. Would you like to tell us more about it?
Frank: A background story first. I had begun writing poetry and stories when I was in high school and always knew those things would be part of my life, but I didn’t really start writing seriously until I was a medical student at the University of Rochester and fell under the influence of writers like WC Williams, James Dickey and Lawerence Ferlinghetti. I stole every spare moment I could to write poetry, and started getting published, which added fuel to the fire, of course. I’m here to tell you that medical school is not a really great place to be when the writing fever grabs you by the throat. It’s a torture to break away from an idea and return to memorizing the insertion of muscles and the pathophysiology of secondary hypoadrenalism when the creative juices are flowing.
But, you do what you have to do. I kept writing more and more through residency and my early years of practicing emergency medicine. But I felt the need for more guidance, so I went through the MFA program at Warren Wilson College. It was wonderful and I enjoyed the workshop experience and got more poems, stories and a non-fiction book published. My medical career then took me back to the University of Rochester, where in the years since I’d graduated, they’d created a Division of Medical Humanities.
A light bulb went off. I approached the wonderful people in the Division with the idea of a creative writing workshop for medical students—i.e., exactly what I would have appreciated as a student. And truly there are multiple points of contact between the art of medicine and creative writing. Both involve transmitting information in an efficient, effective way, of explaining and reassuring, and of connecting your mind to the minds of others. Many medical students nurture the desire to write, so why not foster it and give them permission to grow?
The Division agreed, and so for many years, until my own writing and practice squeezed out the time, I taught a running workshop for first and second year med students, and loved it. To coach and encourage beginning writers—to help them discover their own subjects and refine their drafts—is to nurture your own passion and skills.
Q: In your opinion, what is the key ingredient for writing great medical thrillers?
Frank: We’re all fascinated with medicine, I think, because it’s really about the basic drama of being sentient beings. We want to understand and control the things that make us live, love and die. Why must we grow old? What causes disease and how can we fight against it? The people who devote their lives to medicine as doctors, nurses and other health care providers are given special respect. Who are they? Are they really different? What do they know that the rest of society doesn’t?
So, just placing a story in the context of medicine automatically generates interest. But, a successful medical thriller must have—as must all good stories—believable characters, reasonably credible plot lines and lots of authentic details. Speaking of the details, it’s important in a medical thriller to avoid talking down to the readers. We should assume they are smart enough to figure out most of the medical terminology on their own.
Regarding plot, most medical thrillers involve the revelation of a conspiracy of some sort. In Final Mercy, I unmask the villain early in the story and let the reader in on the secret. The reader, therefore, knows more than the protagonists, and that adds to the suspense. As we watch Jack and Zellie struggle through the maze of suspicion and danger, we know what’s lurking around the corner.
Q: Finally, I like to ask authors this question. What is your passion? What is it that you’re more passionate about than anything else?
Frank: Beyond the heart dominated facts of family and friends, I feel blessed with what feels like circle of vocational and artistic passions, and the one that predominates depends upon which way I’m facing that day. I still spend about three quarters of my working life in medicine, and I love that role, am still trying to perfect it. When I’m in the hospital, I let medicine consume me. On the days I write, it’s all about writing. I’ve also played guitar for a long time and studied jazz for a while. When I’m practicing or playing, that’s the main ticket. When I walk around with a camera, I confess that I wish I had a life to give to photography. But, if push came to shove and I had only one outlet, it would be writing, hands down.
When I was in Vietnam in 1970, I encountered many wonderful Montagnard tribespeople in the Central Highlands. They have a difficult life. I help support an orphanage in Kontum. www.FriendsofVSO.org. I have a passion to visit there someday.
Q: Thanks for the interview, Frank. Do you have any final words?
Frank: I like an analogy I heard recently from a fine writer whose name I should remember, that writing is like swimming underwater. The simile doesn’t apply to writing outlines or taking notes, but to when you start to create the scenes that are the real life blood of any story. Then you must dive and stroke your way down into the moment. Then you surface and do it again. The more you practice, the longer you can stay under. The trick lies in learning when you are just floundering on surface versus going deep.
Many thanks for having me. The pleasure is mine.
Tags: Author Interviews, Final Mercy, Frank Edwards, medical thriller, Zumaya Publications
Join John Ames, as he tours the blogosphere March 1 – April 29 2011 with Pump Up Your Book to talk about his new coming of age novel, Adventures in Nowhere (Pineapple Press). John will be on a nationwide blog tour giving interviews, giving away copy of his books and meeting and greeting new and old fans!
Adventures in Nowhere is an absorbing story of the search for self, allowing a reader to live for a while in the mind of a remarkably thoughtful and intense boy caught at the final edge of childhood.
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