This story told by Marion Stone begins even before Marion and his twin brother, Shiva, are born in Addis Ababa’s Missing Hospital (a mispronunciation of “Mission Hospital”), with the illicit romance between their parents, Sister Mary Joseph Praise, a beautiful Indian nun, and Thomas Stone, a brash, brilliant British surgeon. After Mary dies while giving birth to the twins Thomas vanishes, and Marion and Shiva are raised by Hema and Ghosh, two Indian doctors who also work at Missing, and who shower Marion and Shiva with love and nurture their interest in medicine. Marion and Shiva come of age as Ethiopia hovers on the brink of revolution, and their lives become intertwined with the nation’s politics. Yet it is not politics but love that tears the brothers apart: Shiva sleeps with Genet --- the daughter of their housekeeper and the girl Marion has always loved. And when Genet joins a radical political group fighting for the independence of Eritrea, Marion’s connection to her forces him into exile: he sneaks out of Ethiopia and makes his way to America.
Marion interns at a hospital in the Bronx where the patients are nearly as poor and desperate as those he had seen at Missing. It is here that Marion meets his father and takes his first steps toward reconciling with him. But when the past catches up to Marion he must entrust his life to the two men he thought he trusted least in the world: the father who abandoned him and the brother who betrayed him.
Everyone in our group loved this book. Love, betrayal and loss were main themes of the book and how these subjects affected the characters’s lives. This book is full of vivid descriptions of surgical procedures and is not for the faint hearted. Readers learn about Ethiopian customs and history, which we found interesting. Book kept our attention right up to the surprise ending
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