County
Marcus Magallanes

THE BOOK

This title was nominated for the Frankfurt eBook Awards.

After nearly quitting the program on his first day as an intern at County, Dr. Peter Dooley has since transformed into an efficient, skillful, hard-nosed veteran of the hospital. He routinely encounters and treats a multitude of patients at the gravest stages of illness. Along with his best friend and partner in medicine, Dr. Arthur Capellini, Peter does his best to survive the program and maintain his sanity amidst the overwhelming sickness, death, and personal sleep deprivation inherent to the program.

At the beginning of his third and final year of training, just when he thought he was accustomed to it all, Peter is faced with an unexpected tragedy: the serious illness of a highly respected colleague. Upon his colleague's request, Peter accepts the responsibility of caring for him in the hospital. Ultimately, when the case turns sour, the final decision regarding life or death is left in Peter's hands.

County is the story of one man's personal evolution in the medical profession, from naive medical student to experienced physician. It is an accurate account of medicine residency that portrays doctors as true human beings, sometimes flawed in their judgment and character, always tested by the ominous presence of disease. County depicts death as it affects us all, while at the same time revealing the human bonds which keep death from consuming the living.

SELECTED REVIEWS

County is a story of trying to stay human in an inhuman educational system.  It's a must read for student physicians and those contemplating medical school.  Reading through the book brought me back to my internship days, exciting, nerve-racking, and extremely difficult.  As Dr. Magallanes accurately portrays, internship year is the hardest year of a physician's life.
- - Lee Burnett, D.O., The Student Doctor Network, http://www.studentdoctor.net

Once you pick it up, you won't stop! The characters are real...not overly dramatized, soap-opera people, but real people. As a medical student, it definitely offers a frightening, yet honest picture of what lies in store. A valid glimpse of what many of your health care providers endure during training. I see this book as a call for reform in medical training and residency education. Easy to read, yet describes some of the same problems with internship and residency as conveyed by 'House of God' written some 20 years earlier.
- - Demetrius Dicks, 3rd year med student at Stanford

Moving and Riveting! I was riveted by each chapter of County, and found it easy to identify with such sympathetic characters. I'm a medical student and was fascinated by the scenes and lingo portrayed in this novel. I must say, though, that this novel has made me reconsider whether or not I want to do an internal medicine residency :) End-of-life care issues, in particular, were handled with delicacy and poignancy. County is an excellent and moving contribution to medical literature that I highly recommend.
- - K. Lang, Medical Student

...Marcus Magallanes presents the story of a realistic medical doctor that will make "ER" look like a children's fairytale. COUNTY starts slowly, but then builds into a heartrending drama. The excitement of his writing style and plot line leaves the reader respecting medical doctors. The hospital scenes succeed in making the reader either want to experience the adrenaline rush or to take off at a trot in the other direction.
- - © 2000, Nancy B. Leake, Reviewer All Rights Reserved

DEDICATION

To my wife, Juanita...
who stood by me through medical
school, through internship and residency,
and through the writing of this book.

In memory of Dr. Hassan Tabbarah,
my very close friend and the inspiration
for the character of Dr. Hassid.

THE AUTHOR

Marcus Magallanes completed medicine residency in 1995 at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, a county facility in Los Angeles. He is currently a practicing physician in southern California.

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