Genre: Historical Medical Fiction
Published: September 17, 2023
Pages: 276
DR. RANDALL ARCHER IS A MISFIT
…in the brutal blue-collar home where he grew up.
…as a sixteen-year-old escaping to college, then medical school, on a full scholarship to Harvard.
…in the highest echelons of Boston society, where the woman he marries and the blueblood research partner with whom he shares his laboratory belong.
Even Archer’s brilliance as a pathologist catapults him into direct and dangerous conflict with the medical establishment he fought so hard to join.
As the Great Depression presses down around him, Archer teeters at the edge of a precipice. He must choose between his hard-won career and the sacred oaths he took as a doctor and scientist—before all his choices are lost forever.
For fans of Anthony Doeer and Robin Cook, The Human Trial is full of depth yet wildly entertaining and delivers a world of developed characters.
I received the audiobook version of this book through Netgalley. This is my honest review.
I thought this book was going to be about people who are patients in a human trial for some new miracle drug or something. Instead it seems to be about the birth of microscopes and using them to study viral infections (maybe, I'm not a scientist so I may have misunderstood that aspect of the story), focusing on the student scientists involved in that.
There were some moral dilemma elements peppered throughout the story, the biggest related to questionable data collection practices and falsifying research data. In that respect, it kind of reminded me of Lessons in Chemistry. While it's easy for me to say "I'd never..." I can understand why Archer went along with it. After all, he'd come from nothing and had the promise of returning there if he didn't go along with things. It doesn't make it okay, but I do understand the motivation.
Overall I give The Human Trial 3.1736 out of 5 stars. - Katie
Audrey Gale long dreamed of being a writer, but never anticipated the circuitous road she’d take to get there. After twenty-plus years in the banking industry, she grew tired of corporate gamesmanship and pursued her master’s in fiction writing at the University of Southern California. Her first novel, a legal thriller entitled The Sausage Maker's Daughters, was published under the name A.G.S. Johnson. Her second, The Human Trial, is the first book in a medical-thriller trilogy inspired by Gale’s own experiences with the gap between traditional medicine and approaches based on the findings of the great physicists of the 20th Century. Both The Sausage Maker’s Daughters and The Human Trial incorporate Gale’s fascination with historical and scientific research, and always with women finding their places. Gale lives in Los Angeles with her husband and dogs where she is found hiking the Santa Monica Mountains every chance she gets. Learn more at www.audreygaleauthor.com.
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