Annie Bloom's welcomes local Ron Turker for an in-store reading from his novel The Wandering Jew of St. Salacious. Ron will be in conversation with Margaret Malone, author of the story collection People Like You.

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About The Wandering Jew of St. Salacious:

What happens when you drop an agnostic Jewish surgeon in a century-old Catholic hospital, where the doctor meets dogma and falls for the CEO? A nun, for God's sake. Dr. Martin Fischer, a white-coated Quixote, tilts his scalpel at the bloated underbelly of U.S. healthcare and fights for his patients. His only weapons are surgical skill and a pesky sense of righteous indignation that's driving everyone nuts-including Marty. As he takes on a callous multi-billion-dollar medical corporation, a mercenary surgical group, and the thoroughly corrupt CFO of St. Salacious, an unplanned pregnancy threatens to excommunicate the entire hospital. Can they really do that? It's either stress or God who intervenes. Did Jesus just wink at him from the cross? Turker, a former comic and surgeon, takes us on the quirky hero's journey through the halls of U.S. medicine and draws back the curtain on the fickle and conflicted core of modern healthcare. The Wandering Jew of St. Salacious delivers a humorous blow against the profiteering of Big Medicine, while fanning a spark of hope for a healthier future.

Ron Turker started in the '80s as a standup comic and medical student. Through a series of nonlinear events, he became a pediatric surgeon by day and an unrelenting writer by night. Thirty years of caring for kids at home and worldwide (from the Navajo Nation to Colombia, Peru, and Ecuador, to Syrian refugees in Jordan, and most recently, kids in Ukraine) has shaped, sharpened, and ground his sensibilities into a relentless yet witty voice for healthcare change and equity here in the U.S. You can find his writings in a wide range of journals, textbooks, and periodicals, from the Journal of Pediatric Orthopedics to Open Spaces, and the New York Times.

Margaret Malone is the author of the story collection People Like You (Atelier26 Books), Finalist for the 2016 PEN Hemingway Award and Winner of the Balcones Fiction Prize. Her writing can be found or is forthcoming in BOMB, The Rumpus, The Missouri Review, Paper Darts, and elsewhere. She lives in Portland, Oregon, where she is a co-host of the artist and literary gathering SHARE.