About Shedrow 

Hardcover: 256 pages

Gianni was seated at a metal table, his hands bound behind his back. At one end of the table stood Sal Catroni. Unlike the other man, he wore no disguise. His longish hair was slicked back neatly, white at the sides, darker on top. His brow was furrowed in a scowl, amplifying the deep frown lines between his black-looking eyes. Catroni spoke first. “You know who I am?” he said.
Gianni shook his head.
“I’m Sal Catroni, of the Catroni family, and this here is Hector. Hector was a medic in the marines. He’s here to help you with some medical treatment.”
Hector stood at least six-two, all of it solid muscle. He wore a tight white dress shirt, its silk sleeves rolled neatly to the middle of his massive forearms. A ski mask, open at the forehead, concealed his face, and his closely cropped black hair stood mostly on end. It reminded Gianni of a 1960s style flat-top cut, only not as stiff.
“Hector has some tools for you, Doc,” Catroni said.
Hector opened a clean white linen cloth, the texture of a dishrag but with a starched white appearance. Inside were surgical instruments. Dr. Gianni instantly recognized them—there was a blade handle and several large #10 blades, the kind a surgeon would use to make a long incision. It was not a delicate blade, but one meant to cut hard and fast through a lot of tissue with a single swipe. Next to the blades was a bone cutting forceps, which Gianni knew to be a Rongeurs forceps. Then there was a large pile of neatly folded gauze pads.
“Recognize those tools?” Catroni asked.
Gianni nodded
.“Well, Hector here is prepared to do a little surgery today.”

Paperback: 514 pages

“And now, ladies and gentlemen,” Tanner called into the mic, “the moment you’ve all been waiting for, the culmination of the first annual Best Friends with Benefits Gala….We have, for your bidding pleasure, eight men to auction off for dates. And those men all happen to be—well, we hope at least—some of your favorite ATP tennis players!” The room went wild. All the guests were on their feet applauding and screaming and throwing wide-eyed looks of anticipation at each other.
“But,” Tanner continued, “the hard part is, you won’t know who each one is till he comes out. So, you have to decide, do I want Nate Young, who is pretty damn good-looking? Or should I wait to see if somebody even more strapping and charming, say, Tanner Bruin?, comes along?”
Tanner laughed at himself while all the women in the room giggled wildly like teenagers and shouted their agreement. Hilton laughed. Tanner cracked her up.
“And if you should win one of our fine young men, you get not only dinner for two at one of New York City’s finest restaurants of your choice, you’ll also get to sit in this player’s courtside box for one match at the US Open next August!”

The noise was deafening. Hilton couldn’t even hear herself as she yelled and clapped enthusiastically along with everyone else. This was going to be awesome, even though she knew there was no way she’d have enough money to win one of the players. She wondered who they all were, and how much they would go for.
“All right, so let’s get started!”
Noah, who was now standing in the front row, tossed Tanner a bottle of champagne. Tanner opened it, spraying it into the crowd and the reverberating cheers.
As people started to quiet, Hilton and Luke took their seats.
“You gonna do this one?” Luke asked with a playful grin.
Hilton elbowed him and grinned back. “Shut up. I wish. If I had endless thousands of dollars. But hmmmm.” She frowned. “I wouldn’t know who to pick. They’re all so hot…” She grinned at Luke again and ducked out of the way as he tried to rub his knuckles across the top of her head.
The first three players to be auctioned off were James Blake, Mardy Fish, and Mike Bryan. Hilarious old-school songs like “Dancing Queen” were blasting as each player strutted around the stage and Noah, resuming his role as MC/auctioneer, shouted the player’s bio into the mic. Hilton was having a blast. She loved the crazy atmosphere in here. This was definitely the way to do a charity benefit.
After Mike Bryan came Andy Roddick, then Bob Bryan. He went for a thousand more dollars than Mike, his twin brother, and Noah made a big deal out of it. The whole crowd yelled, “Oooooohhhh!” and Hilton burst out laughing halfway through yelling it.
Then, to Hilton’s complete shock, came Haidin. She quickly looked back to Haidin’s table, checking for Aubrey. Aubrey was probably pissed he was doing this, even though it was for charity. Ohhhh…Aubrey wasn’t there…the empty chair that had been next to Haidin earlier was now occupied by his agent/manager or whatever he was. Hilton cracked a smile and turned back to the front. Haidin, of course, didn’t dance like everyone else, he simply walked to the center of the stage and stood there looking like a totally hot, pissed-off bad boy. She wondered how much he would get. Probably just as much as everybody else, if not more. She rolled her eyes as Noah finished Haidin’s bio, which hadn’t been near as detailed or funny as everyone else’s.
“Bidding starts at one thousand dollars! Do we have one thousand?”
“A hundred thousand!” a woman shouted from the back of the room.
Hilton’s mouth dropped open in shock. She and everyone else in the room turned to stare. Even Noah and Haidin were staring in surprise.
The woman was petite and had her blonde hair piled on top of her head. She was probably about forty, and she was wearing a long white sequined evening gown.
“Okay!” Noah said somewhat dubiously. “A hundred thousand dollars! Going once…going twice…sold! To the woman in the back!”
Haidin turned and left the stage, still looking shocked.
Nate Young was next, and when he went for only fifty-one thousand, Noah and all the other players yelled, “Oooooohhhh!” again.
“And next, the one all you ladies have probably really been waiting for, we have our—to use his own words—strapping and charming host, Tanner Bruin!”
Tanner burst onto stage and started break dancing to “Billie Jean.”
Hilton jumped to her feet, grinning and screaming for him along with all the other women in the room. She couldn’t believe how good of a break dancer he was. And he looked so freaking hot in his suit with that mint green shirt…
“Tanner hails from Vero Beach, Florida, but he was actually born right here in Aspen, Colorado, where he grew up skiing, snowboarding, and, of course, playyying tennis!” Noah rolled his eyes sarcastically at the crowd, and everybody laughed again. “He is currently twenty-five years old and ranked number three in the world! Tanner enjoys gardening, ice ballet, and Jell-O wrestling. He is also president of the Vero Beach chapter of the Richard Simmons Fan Club.”
Hilton burst out laughing. “Ice ballet?!” she gasped to Luke. “What the hell is that?!”
“Bidding starts at one thousand dollars! Do I hear a thousand?”
A few women went back and forth until the bidding was up to fifty thousand, which was about what the other players before Haidin had gone for. Hilton expected Tanner to get a little more since he was the host. A lot of women had probably been waiting, expecting him to be last.
“Seventy-five thousand,” said a cool and confident new voice from behind Hilton. She turned to see Rory, the girl Tanner had won earlier in the women’s auction, standing just three tables behind hers.
Tanner heard her voice too and turned to look at her. When he saw who it was he grinned right at her. Hilton had to look away, because he was looking right in her direction too…but he didn’t even see her. He was grinning over her head at Rory. Hilton took a quick drink of her champagne.
“Seventy-five thousand! Going once…going twice…sold, to Rory from Aspen!” Noah laughed, obviously remembering Rory too.
Hilton turned to look at Rory again. She was smiling at Tanner and holding up her glass of champagne in a silent toast. Hilton turned back to the stage. Tanner gave Rory a chin-up nod and pointed at her for a split second, still grinning.
Even though it was in front of hundreds of people, it was somehow an intimate moment between the two of them, like they already knew each other and there was something going on between them.
***
“Hey, you should follow them,” Luke said half an hour or so later. He and Hilton were dancing and she was trying not to feel weirdly uneasy about how this weekend was turning out.
“What?” Hilton looked where Luke had nodded. Tanner and Rory had left Andy Roddick, James Blake, and Mike Bryan, to whom they’d been talking for several minutes, and were heading toward the exit.
“It’s where the good pics are gonna be,” Luke said with a grin. “Deidre will love you.”
Hilton hesitated. She knew six months ago she would’ve jumped all over it; she would’ve run after Tanner and any girl, hoping to get some hot pictures. But now…it just kind of sucked. But…it would seem weird to Luke if she didn’t want to, plus she hadn’t really gotten any of the crazy pictures so far this weekend that she knew Deidre wanted. “Thanks!” she said, rushing over to their table to grab her camera. “Come with me!”
Luke hurried to the hallway, and when Hilton joined him a moment later, he pointed in the direction of the Vail Room. “They went around the corner down there,” he said quietly.
The hallway was empty and chilly, and Hilton rubbed her arms as they rushed down it and then stopped to peek around the corner. Luckily the carpet was thick and they didn’t really have to worry about being quiet.
This hall was empty too. Hilton and Luke exchanged a quick glance, then hurried to the glass door at the end. A sign above it read EXIT in bold red letters.
“It’s gonna be noisy,” Hilton whispered. She could just hear the door clicking loudly as they eased it open, and then Tanner and Rory would know they’d been followed. Even though Tanner would know she was just trying to get pictures, she didn’t want him to see her right now for some reason.
“I can’t see them,” Luke whispered back. “They probably won’t hear. Come on.” He pushed on the door handle. The door swung open, making a clicking sound just like Hilton had imagined. They glanced at each other, then stepped out into the three or so inches of snow covering the ground.
Hilton looked around, rubbing her hands rapidly up and down her bare arms. Her feet and strappy stilettos were buried in the snow, and the bottom of her dress was already soaked. They appeared to be in some kind of small courtyard. Suddenly delighted laughter pierced the air.
“Hey, look.” Luke pointed, already heading across the small courtyard area. There was a slightly open gate on the far side. Hilton kicked off her shoes and rushed after him, holding her dress up.
They stopped at the gate and peered through. They were looking right at the lodge’s heated outdoor pool. Two pairs of shoes lay haphazardly on the deck, and Tanner and Rory were both in the pool, laughing giddily. Hilton raised her camera and started taking pictures. She didn’t want to turn the flash on and give herself and Luke away, but there were only two deck lights framing the pool, and the pictures weren’t coming out great.
“This is clutch!” Luke laughed excitedly under his breath, holding up his hand for a high five.
Even though part of Hilton was totally bummed, part of her was caught up in the excitement too. Even with the lack of lighting, these pictures were going to be awesome. Deidre would be thrilled. Hilton just wanted to wait till Tanner and Rory got a little closer to each other in the pool, and then she was going to turn on the flash and get one really good one, then run.
“Hey, get on my shoulders and let me flip you,” Tanner said breathlessly. Even in the dim lighting Hilton could see his irresistible grin.
“Ooohh, you always have the crazy ideas. Just don’t flip me into the wall and make me break a bone!” Rory laughed. Tanner laughed too and splashed at her as she swam closer to him, then he went underwater and Rory positioned herself over him, only her head visible.
A second later they rose out of the water together, Rory on his shoulders, her silvery-blue gown clinging to her in a totally misshapen fashion and Tanner still in his suit jacket. Rory was laughing. Tanner pushed upward, Rory flipped backward, the camera flashed, and Hilton and Luke took off running, both of them laughing hysterically.
“Oh my gosh, that was freakin’ awesome!” Hilton screamed when they were back inside the lodge. She and Luke slapped a high five so hard it left Hilton’s palm stinging. “Woooooo!”

CHAPTER 1
The death itself wasn’t the unusual thing. The unusual thing was we tried to stop it. That first dying heart came on a Thursday night, a little after midnight on May 5th. I remember the date because it was Cinco de Mayo, a Mexican holiday. There’d been celebrations all day long in San Francisco, including in the Presidio where I was working that night.
I was one of two physicians on duty in the ER at Deaconess Hospital, doing the overnight shift, 6 PM to 6 AM. The early part of the shift had been busy. When I arrived at six o’clock, the waiting room was bursting with patients: drunken revelers with lacerations and sprained ankles, tourists with sunburns, picnickers vomiting from food poisoning, six members of a mariachi band with heat stroke and dehydration. We worked fast, moving from one stretcher to the next, seeing the most critical patients first and moving on.
Then, around ten o’clock, the flow of new patients stopped—abruptly, like water from a faucet turned from on to off. By 11:00 PM, there were only four patients in the waiting room. By 11:45, I finished sewing up my last laceration: a three-inch gash on the forehead of an intoxicated coed from San Francisco State.

Then, there was no one. The emergency department had gone from chaos to serenity.
With nothing to do, Hansen, the other physician on duty, went to catch a nap in the staff lounge. I washed up and went over to join Bill—the night nurse—at the nursing station. We sat with our feet up, drinking black coffee from Styrofoam cups, looking across the empty row of stretcher beds. Bill launched nostalgically into a pornographic tale about a buxom nurse he’d known while serving as a medic during the Gulf War. He’d just reached the climax—so to speak—of his story when, suddenly, the calm of the night was interrupted by an announcement over the intercom:
“Code Blue, East Annex, back station! Code Blue, East Annex, back station! ”
“Christ,” Bill said stopping short in his story. “East Annex? That’s the Alzheimer’s unit.”
“Yeah,” I said. Bill and I exchanged puzzled looks.
“Since when do they call Code Blues on the Alzheimer’s unit?” Bill asked.
The announcement came again, sounding now more urgent. “Code Blue, East Annex! Code Blue!” It was an urgent call for help, hospital jargon for, “Come quick, someone’s trying to die.” And, at that hour of the night, it was the duty of the ER doctor to come and stop the dying. Or at least to try.
I jumped up and grabbed the “Code bag,” the big black duffel bag filled with the equipment we’d need to run the Code: defibrillator unit, intubation tubes, cardiac meds.
“Let’s go,” I said.
“But I was just getting to the good part of my story,” Bill said.
“Save it for later.”
We ran out of the emergency department down the long connector tunnel leading to the East Annex. Why were they calling a Code Blue on the East Annex? I wondered as we ran. In my three years of working at Deaconess, this was the first time I’d been called to a Code on the annex. Normally, they didn’t run Code Blues on the Alzheimer’s ward. The patients there were “DNR”—“Do Not Resuscitate.” In other words, when a patient on the annex stopped breathing or went into cardiac arrest, nothing was to be done. No medical heroics. No breathing machines, no cardiac stimulants, no shocking the heart. This was considered the humane thing to do. All the patients on the annex had at least moderately advanced Alzheimer’s disease; all were near the end of life. To prolong the lives of these poor souls at all costs was not the aim of medical care on the East Annex. The aim of medical care on the East Annex was comfort, a safe environment, and, when the time came, death with dignity.
I heard Bill huffing and puffing, falling behind as we ran down the hall. I turned back and saw him slow to a walk.
“I’ll have to…meet…you…” he said breathlessly.
“Maybe if you give up those damn cigarettes,” I called back as I went around the bend in the tunnel.
“Maybe if…I was…a damn jogger like you,” Bill called out.
At the end of the connector, I came to the door leading to the second floor of the annex. Normally, the door was shut and locked. The East Annex was a locked ward because the patients there—at least the ones who were ambulatory—had a habit of wandering off the ward and getting lost when the doors weren’t locked. Now, as I reached the end of the connector, a rotund, uniformed security guard stood at the door holding it open for me. “Straight ahead, past the back station, on the left,” the guard said.
I went through the door and immediately someone shouted out. “Over here!”
I ran to where six or seven people were gathered outside one of the rooms. There’s always a crowd at any Code Blue. Death, either actual or imminent, is always something that fascinates people. Several of the people in the crowd had no business being there: for example, the ward secretary standing on her tiptoes peering in at the door and the two members of the janitorial staff looking over her shoulder.
Elbowing my way into the room, I got my first look at the patient: an elderly, gray-skinned woman wearing pink pajamas. She lay lifelessly on her back on the bed, the covers tossed back. Four people were gathered closely around the bed working on her. The ward tech, a muscular, crew-cut fellow, was performing chest compressions, pumping away on the old woman’s sternum with the heel of his hand. At the head of the bed stood the respiratory therapist, a skinny African-American fellow named Lamont—I had worked with him in the emergency department. Lamont was holding a mask over the patient’s face and squeezing breaths of oxygen from an oxygen bag. At the foot of the bed stood the Code Blue pharmacist, a young Hispanic woman I’d never seen before; she attentively held her tray of Code Blue medicines, ready to dispense whatever might be called for. The fourth person at the bed was Juanita Obregón, one of the East Annex night nurses. Juanita was also a familiar face. She’d been a good friend of mine since my early days at Deaconess. She stood opposite the ward tech, pressing her fingers into the patient’s groin, feeling for a pulse at the femoral artery.
“Pescoe!” Juanita said as I entered the room. Juanita always called me by my last name—not “Philip” or “Phil” or “Dr. Pescoe,” just “Pescoe”. “Thank God. I was in to see her twenty minutes ago, and she was absolutely fine, watching TV. Then, I came in to turn off the television, and she’s unresponsive. Not breathing, no pulse—out.”
Juanita stepped back as I came over on her side of the bed.
“Who called the Code?” I asked.
“I did,” Juanita said.
“Why? She’s an Alzheimer’s patient, isn’t she?”
“Yes,” Juanita said. “All the patients on the annex are Full Code now, while they’re running the study.”
“Study? What study?”
“Neussbaum and his team. They’re running a drug study, some new experimental treatment for Alzheimer’s.”
I looked at Juanita. I hadn’t heard anything about a drug study on the East Annex. Neussbaum, whom Juanita had referred to, was Tucker Neussbaum, the doctor in charge of the Alzheimer’s unit. He’d never said anything to me about a change in resuscitation status on the unit. Of course, now was not the time to start questioning DNR orders—if the little old lady in the pink pajamas had been declared a Full Code, then so be it. My job was to do everything I could to bring her back to life. Now.
I turned toward the ward tech. “Hold compressions,” I said.
The tech stopped pumping on the patient’s chest and stood back. I pressed my fingers into the old lady’s neck and felt for a pulse. Nothing. I unzipped the Code bag, turned on the defibrillator machine, and took out the defibrillator paddles. Tearing open the woman’s pajama top, I pressed the paddles against her bony chest. The paddles acted like heart monitor electrodes, and we all looked at the TV screen on the defibrillator machine. The neon light showed the woman’s heart tracing, a wiggly pattern running across the screen. The wiggly tracing meant there was still some “life” left in the old woman’s heart, still some electrical activity. The heart rhythm was not normal, however, far from it: the woman’s heart was quivering out of control in a rhythm called “ventricular fibrillation.” In order to save her life, something had to be done to stop the quivering. Otherwise, the woman would die.
“V-fib,” I called out. “I’m going to shock.”
I turned the knobs to charge the defibrillator just as Bill came into the room, wheezing like a steam engine.
“V-fib,” I said. “They’re running some sort of drug study, and all the patients are Full Code.” I pressed the paddles firmly down on the woman’s chest. “Stand clear!” I shouted.
Lamont and the ward tech stepped away from the bed, and I activated the defibrillator. A pulse of electricity shot through the woman’s chest causing her back to arch up. We all looked down at the monitor for the second it takes to re-establish the heart rhythm after the jolt of electricity. The neon tracing appeared on the screen, squiggly and still fibrillating out of control. The shock had failed to convert the old woman’s heartbeat to a normal rhythm.
“Okay,” I said, “epinephrine. We need an IV.”
“She already has one,” Juanita said. “Left forearm.”
I looked at the patient’s left forearm, and, just as Juanita said, there was an IV already in place. A rubber-tipped intravenous catheter had been secured with a gauze wrap and tape. The IV was further held in place by a fishnet stocking covering the entire forearm.
I looked at the pharmacist. “Epinephrine, one milligram,” I said. As the pharmacist reached into her box of medicines, I said to the ward tech, “Continue chest compressions. I’m going to intubate her.”
As in a choreographed dance, everyone went into action. The pharmacist took a syringe of epinephrine—adrenaline—from her tray and handed it to Juanita. Juanita injected the heart stimulant into the IV. The tech resumed his chest compressions, and Lamont resumed bagging oxygen to the patient. Meanwhile, I went to the head of the bed and prepared to put a plastic tube down the old woman’s throat so we could breathe for her more effectively.
They say much of emergency medicine is “cookbook medicine,” and a well-trained monkey can perform much of what emergency physicians do. There’s no better example of this than the Code Blue cardiac arrest. Every step in the Code is based on a precisely defined algorithm, and everyone knows the drill. We’d already performed the first step of the algorithm: shock the patient’s heart with 360 Joules of electricity. This had failed to stop the quivering, so we moved to the next steps of the protocol: a shot of intravenous epinephrine and intubation.
“7.5 tube,” I said.
Bill took the throat tube out of the Code bag and handed it to me. Lamont pulled off the oxygen face mask and stepped aside, and I checked the woman’s mouth to see if there was anything inside that might make it difficult to put the tube down—blood, loose dentures, chunks of food. Her mouth and throat were clear.
“Does this patient have any history of heart problems?” I asked Juanita as I put the laryngoscope blade into the mouth and pried open the jaw.
“No, that’s just it,” Juanita said. “Her only medical history is Alzheimer’s disease. Otherwise, she’s the healthiest patient on the ward. Then again, that’s what I said about the last patient who died. This is the second Code we’ve had in three days.”
“Oh?” I said slipping the throat tube into the trachea.
“Yes. Mrs. Messing, she died on Tuesday.”
Lamont attached the oxygen bag to the end of the tube and began pumping 100% oxygen directly into the woman’s lungs.
“Is Neussbaum here tonight?” I asked.
“No. He just left, half an hour ago,” Juanita said. “His resident is on call tonight, Dr. Chester Mott. He’s here.” Juanita motioned with her head toward a young man standing on the other side of the room.
I looked over at the man. I hadn’t noticed him before; he was slumped down in the shadows of the far corner of the room. He was a short, overweight fellow wearing a black tee shirt and surgical scrub pants; he had carrot orange hair that stood out in all directions. He looked like a resident, all right: young, disheveled, sleep-deprived. I figured he must have been sleeping in the call room when the Code was called.
“Okay, hold compressions,” I said. I looked at the heart monitor: the rhythm was still v-fib. Our efforts were getting us nowhere. “Let’s shock again, 360 Joules.”
Bill charged the machine to 360, and I delivered the shock. Again, no change. What’s more, the amplitude of the heart waves on the screen was getting smaller, flatter. It was a bad sign.
I looked over at the resident. “Want to help, do some chest compressions?” I asked.
The resident looked at me with wide, frightened eyes and shook his head, no. I felt my head cock sideways as I looked at him in surprise. No? That’s odd, I thought. Residents were supposed to be keen to jump in and get involved in a Code Blue. Even if they’re nervous and not really eager to do so, at least they’re supposed to pretend. That’s what they’re there for, to learn. However, I decided to cut Dr. Mott some slack. No doubt he was feeling overwhelmed and anxious, the way most residents feel during the heat of a cardiac arrest. If this had been his rotation through the emergency department, I would have insisted. However, this was the Alzheimer’s ward. The young Dr. Mott was supposed to be learning about dementia and urinary incontinence and bed sores, not fibrillating hearts. No need to press him into service if he didn’t feel comfortable with it.
“Continue compressions,” I said turning back to the tech. I looked at pharmacist. “Amiodarone, 300 milligrams, IV,” I said regurgitating the next step of the protocol.
We continued to work down the algorithm, delivering further shocks and further medications. The room became pungent with the smell of the patient’s singed flesh owing to the repeated shocks. Another bad sign. Between shocks and injections, I watched and supervised the Code team. The ward tech had worked up a heavy sweat pumping away at the chest compressions.
“Need a break?” I asked.
“No, I’m okay.”
“Bill can relieve you. Or,” I said raising my voice a little, “maybe the resident.” Mott didn’t move. He just stood there looking down at the floor, his hands folded diffidently over his protuberant belly.
“No, I’m fine,” the tech said; “I’m good.”
I looked at the patient lying lifelessly on the bed. I wondered what it was that had caused her heart to go suddenly haywire. Heart attack? Juanita had said there was no history of heart problems. I looked at the old woman’s face: she had to be at least eighty-five-years-old. Her hair was white and thinned to near baldness at the crown, her forehead covered with age spots. Her cheeks stood out prominently on the bony face, and her eyes were sunk deep into the sockets. I asked myself again: why in the world were we Coding this bent-up old lady with Alzheimer’s disease?
I asked the tech to hold compressions and looked once again at the heart monitor. The tracing was almost flat now. The woman was going to die. I knew it, everyone knew it—we were just going through the motions now.
“Okay,” I said. I could hear the resigned tone in my own voice. “Let’s try another shock—360 Joules.”
We continued our efforts for another ten minutes until the woman’s heartbeat was truly flat-line on the monitor. I delivered one final, ineffective shock then decided to call it quits.
“I’m going to stop,” I said. “Any objections?”
Not surprisingly, no one objected.
“Okay…,” I said looking up at the clock on the wall. “12:57.”
The tech stopped the chest compressions; Lamont stopped squeezing the oxygen bag; the pharmacist closed her box of medicines. Somewhere in the shadows I saw the young Dr. Mott slip silently out of the room. I looked down at the patient. Her face was now a blue-purple color, and the endotracheal tube stuck out of her mouth like the end of a large fish hook.
“Okay,” Juanita said. “12:57. I’ll mark it down as the time of death.” 

It is 1498, the dawn of the Renaissance and Venice teems with rumors of an ancient book that hold the secrets of unimaginable power. Rich and poor alike speculate abouthe the long buried secred tht might be scrawled in its pages and where the book might be hidden in the labyrinthine city. While those who seek the book will stop at nothing to get it, those who know will die to protect it.

As a storm of intrigue percolates in Her Most Serene Republic, Luciano, a penniless orphan, is plucked off the street by the doge’s chef and taken in as the chef’s apprentice. In the palace kitchen Luciano is initiated into the chef’s rich and mysterious world where recipes are more than they seem.

It is not long before Luciano is caught up in the madness. Torn between loyalty to his street friends and his passion for Francesca, a convent girl, Lucianco’s worthiness is tested. Armed with a precicious mind and insatiable curiosity, Luciano embarks on a perilous journey to uncover the truth. What he discovers will swing opent he shutters of his mind, inflalme his deepest esires, and leaven an indelible mark on his soul.

My name is Luciano - just Luciano. I’m Venetian by birth, old now and chained to my memories, compelled to return, link by link, seeking clarity.
There’s a matter about which I am sworn to secrecy, but times have changed since I took my oath. In my lifetime, I’ve witnessed man’s emergence from centuries of darkness. Great thinkers have unlocked our minds, and great artists have opened our eyes and our hearts. Some are calling it a renaissance - a rebirth - and it will reverberate far into the future because of a miraculous new invention called the printing press. Perhaps, now, it would be a disservice to the advancement of knowledge to remain silent. Perhaps the pendulum has swung a full arc, and the time has come for me to speak. If I proceed with caution … well, those who have ears let them hear.


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“Elle Newmark immerses us in 16th century Venice with lush and vivid detail. We live history through the eyes of an urchin named Luciano who, seemingly by pure chance, is plucked from the streets by the head chef of the lavish Doges Palace. But just as we are about to lose ourselves in a particularly exquisite entrée, we are caught up in a vicious search for a book of alchemy, said to contain the secrets of wealth, power, and life itself. Tension builds as we find that this coveted book has a curious connection to the palace kitchen. Beautifully and cleverly descriptive, the story twists, turns, and finally emerges as a lasting testament to wisdom and truth.” -Mary Fagan

“This is a well written story and it held me captive for two nights running. At times I wanted to speed read through, but I fought the urge as it’s so beautifully written, I simply wanted to make it last. That’s how good this story is.” -Ken Douglas

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Prologue There was something odd about it, despite its plain and inconsequential appearance. Vinita gazed at the mystery envelope for a long moment, weighed it in the palm of her hand. Her instincts were prickling. It went beyond mere feminine intuition.
She didn’t receive any letters from her family in India anymore. Cheap long-distance telephone rates and email had put an end to that somewhat antiquated form of communication.
The smudged postal seal on the envelope read Mumbai—one of India’s largest and most populous cities—a place Vinita was very familiar with. The envelope had that typical “India” look—multiple postage stamps in various colors and sizes; thin brown paper; and the sealing flap placed over the vertical edge, unlike the American style horizontal edge. But it didn’t look like the occasional wedding invitation or the quarterly statements from the bank where she and husband maintained a small account in rupees.
There was no return address, but it was sent to her attention—neatly hand-printed. She slit it open with her finger and eased out the contents—a single sheet of white ruled paper. Her hands shook a little. She wasn’t sure if it was anticipation or anxiety. Or both.
The message was brief—a few lines penned in blue ink. She scanned it quickly, trying to ignore the tingle crawling up her spine like the cautious progress of a venomous spider. The subject matter was bizarre. The writer’s name was missing. The trembling in her hands edged up a notch.
Only minutes ago, it had looked like any ordinary Saturday morning—a day to recoup after five hectic days of poring over spreadsheets, memos, and databases till her eyeballs ached and her back turned stiff as cardboard.
This morning, lying in bed, through drowsy eyes she’d watched the first shimmering rays of sunlight poke their fingers through the window blinds. The sound of the wind whistling through the pale green spring foliage was a sign of a brisk but sunny April day.
May, her favorite month, was right around the corner. The dogwoods and azaleas in the neighborhood, weighed down by fat, succulent buds, attested to that. Spring was always such a buoyant season, so full of promise. It had brought a contented smile to her lips.
Reminding herself that it was time to emerge from the warm cocoon of the down comforter, she’d sat up in bed, stretched like a slothful kitten, and leaned back against the headboard. She’d managed to grab more than two extra hours of sleep. Her reward for waking early on weekdays.
Her husband was on a business trip to Detroit, and wasn’t due to return until the following week, so she had the weekend to herself. She’d planned to indulge herself by brewing a cup of scalding masala chai—strong tea delicately laced with her own blend of five spices instead of the usual coffee-on-the-run on weekdays at the office. Then she was going to eat lunch at the taco place and do some shopping at the mall.
Working late the previous evening had prevented her from looking at the mail right away. Exhausted, she’d tossed the stack of correspondence on the nightstand, eaten a quick meal of leftovers, and gone straight to bed.
Now, as she sat on the bed in her aqua print pajamas and checked the mail before getting dressed, she wondered if the weekend of self-indulgence she’d been looking forward to was already beginning to wilt and curl at the edges. The tacos and the shopping spree no longer appealed.
Who could have sent her the odd message? An old friend? An acquaintance? She blew her disheveled bangs out of her eyes to read it again, more carefully this time. Perhaps there were clues she had missed the first time.
My dear Mrs. Patil,
I am writing to tell you about your son. He is suffering from myeloid leukemia. Many years ago, I had made a promise that I will never reveal anything about him, but this is a serious matter. A bone marrow transplant is his last hope. My conscience will not allow me to let a young man die without having a chance to try every possible treatment. Your brother may be able to give you all the details.
I leave the matter in your hands.
Best Regards & Blessings,
A well-wisher
Who was this nameless letter-writer? And why had he or she chosen to remain anonymous? Something about the message was disturbing.
How could someone spring something like this on a total stranger? Whose son were they talking about, anyway? Was it possible the letter was erroneously mailed to her? But what if it wasn’t a mistake and she was indeed the intended recipient?
Was this someone’s idea of a sick joke? But then, why would they spend over forty rupees to mail something all the way to the U.S. as a mere prank? Everything about the letter spelled serious intent. This was no hoax …