Reminiscent of Chekhov's stories, The Blood of Strangers is a visceral portrayal of a physician's encounters with the highly charged world of an emergency room. In this collection of spare and elegant stories, Dr. Frank Huyler reveals a side of medicine where small moments—the intricacy of suturing a facial wound, the bath a patient receives from her husband and daughter—interweave with the lives and deaths of the desperately sick and injured.

The author presents an array of fascinating characters, both patients and doctors—a neurosurgeon who practices witchcraft, a trauma surgeon who unexpectedly commits suicide, a wounded murderer, a man chased across the New Mexico desert by a heat-seeking missile. At times surreal, at times lyrical, at times brutal and terrifying, The Blood of Strangers is a literary work that emerges from one of the most dramatic specialties of modern medicine. This deeply affecting first book has been described by one early reader as "the best doctor collection I have seen since William Carlos Williams's The Doctor Stories."

Frank Huyler is an emergency physician in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He is a graduate of Williams College and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and his poetry has appeared in such periodicals as The Atlantic Monthly, The Georgia Review, and Poetry, among others.

"Utterly engrossing, moving, poetic accounts."—Kirkus

"Watch out! This book could make you miss your subway stop or an appointment. For Huyler is, besides a caring and skillful physician, a poet whose choice of words, conciseness, and feeling for rhythm draw one into the stories he tells."—Booklist

"The author of these doctor stories is an E.R. physician as well as a poet, and his work shows the economy and sharp attention that both jobs demand."—The New Yorker

"This haunting, exquisitely observed collection of medical vignettes is much more than a compilation of odd cases from the emergency room. Huyler probes beneath the surface to reveal the marrow of his encounters with patients . . . his character studies of the often quirky, sometimes tragic colleagues and patients who pass through the ward are quite poignant. Though this slim collection ends just as one has settled into it, it marks Huyler as a writer to watch."—Publishers Weekly starred review

"With the unflagging popularity of TV shows such as ER and TLC's Paramedics, Frank Huyler's THE BLOOD OF STRANGERS should find plenty of readers.... Huyler, a doctor who's had poetry published in the Atlantic Monthly, is a literary writer who captures his stories movingly and thoughtfully in little space, much the way ER did in its first season." — Boston Phoenix Literary Supplement

"Huyler's writing is sharp and spare, clean as a scalpelS.This volume is a modest jewel, a compact, faceted gem that shines with intelligence." —The Boston Globe

"These 28 vignettes tell in stripped-down prose what [Huyler's] profession is like, leaving the reader both shocked and moved." —"Editor's Choice" in the San Francisco Chronicle Book Review

"At times, Huyler's writing is so crisp and beautiful it startles." —New England Journal of Medicine

"Observant and sympathetic, Huyler is a vivid writer...each flash of memory is gripping..." —New Scientist

"Many of these 'episodes' are moving. All of them are shocking…Huyler is a fine writer with an unerring eye for the dramatic metaphor." –San Francisco Chronicle Book Review

“[Huyler] writes so beautifully, in that humble, simple way that is very affecting. It's very compassionate, filled with detail and just splendid, lucid sentences.”—Entertainment Weekly