This is a story about what it took to become a doctor when doctors were physicians, not providers. It is about a young doctor doing his internship in a city/county hospital in the early seventies and the training he went through to become a competent physician. It is about his struggle to find love and maintain hope in the face of the daunting challenges he faced. It is about the wild drug- and alcohol-fueled parties coupled with the torrid nights of unrestrained passion he needed in order to deal with the pathos of the human condition he encountered every day at the hospital. It is first and foremost a love story about two young lovers, but interwoven in the framework of their love are the obstacles they have to overcome and the transitions they had to go through to reach the threshold of a bright future together. It is about one year, the internship year, in the life of a young doctor going through hell, but finding heaven in the love of a beautiful, exceptional, young woman.

The United States is ranked 11th in the world among industrialized nations in health care, yet the cost of health care in this country is the highest in the world and double the cost in France, the country with the best ranking. There are multiple reasons why Americans pay more and get less, but one major factor is physician quality. Health care quality is tied to physician quality. This country once had the best health care in the world because it had the best physicians in the world. Those physicians were trained with methods that went back to Dr. William Osler, the Father of Modern Medicine. However, the methods he developed damaged many doctors during their training and left some of them with a form of post-traumatic stress syndrome. Reforms were instituted in the training methods, but those reforms left deficits in the physicians' training. The medical profession needs to find ways to replicate the previous training experience without damaging physicians in the process in order to improve the quality of health care in this country.

Since life is the most precious thing anyone possesses, health care should be a priority for any advanced society. Therefore, relieving suffering, preventing disability, and prolonging life should be a fundamental sociological premise. In order to fulfill that premise, well-trained, dedicated, intelligent physicians are needed. But unlike the young doctors in this story, physicians in training should not have to revert to sex and drugs to keep them in their scrubs. Doctors have to be properly trained to become competent reliable physicians, but that training should not be so stressful it damages them and leaves them with lifelong scars.

However, this novel is about more than a young man becoming a competent, reliable physician, finding love, and maintaining hope in the face of the challenges he endures during his training. It also addresses the issues that arose out of the counter culture of the 60s and 70s along with the problems our society faces today. The young lovers must navigate the lure of drug use, the changing mores and morals of the sexual revolution, racism, the bigotry of the poorly educated, sexual harassment, the corrosive effects of poverty and wealth inequality on society, along with the advent of nihilism and existentialism in our culture. It is about the complexities of life in the ever more rapidly evolving world of today.