S.I.C. Memorial

by Glenn Vanstrum

Overview

S.I.C. MEMORIAL

A family can survive anything, if it can hang on through a hurricane, the founding of a surf religion, and a fungus among us.

Hubert Humperdinck is an anesthesiologist at Sarah Imogene Cunningham Memorial, a hospital in San Diego. Hubert does not like to work, except to earn enough money to take time off to hit the waves or write screenplays. His sons, Razor and Thor, surf circles around him. When they’re not out in the water, they experiment with mice in his garage laboratory. Hubert’s beautiful wife, Delilah, and a pair of geriatric golden retrievers, Darth and Penny, do their best to keep the three under control, but they pretty much fail.

When a marine fungus contaminates the air ducts and patients of S.I.C. Memorial, Infectious Disease fingers Hubert as the source. A billionaire heart transplant patient, an Arab oil sheik, offers $200 million to build a new, uninfected hospital, the offer matched by a Catholic charity. As Muslims battle Christians over naming rights for the new center, a group of terrorists take the existing building--with its patients and physicians--hostage.

Hubert, hospitalized with a fungal foot infection, battles to win over the minds of the brain-washed terrorists. He invents a new religion and succeeds in converting all but one. After a harrowing escape to the wilds of drug-ravaged Mexico, he returns to work on the remaining die-hard, but only an insane neurosurgeon and Hubert’s dying dog, Darth, offer the faintest hope of a plan.

As the California ocean heats to a record eighty degrees, Hubert finds himself caught in a web of hurricane weather, medicine gone mad, and the wrath of a legal system intent on imprisoning him for murder. Will he go to jail? Will Delilah dump him? Will his latest screenplay get made into a movie?
Only a madman can survive these calamities. Dr. Humperdinck, amiable and whacked-out as he is, makes the grade. He’s certifiably nuts. And insanity is the only thing that can save him.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940032837435
Publisher:	Glenn Vanstrum
Publication date:	10/29/2011
Sold by:	Smashwords
Format:	eBook
File size:	544 KB

About the Author

Glenn Vanstrum’s fiction has been published in LITnIMAGE, the Bellevue Literary Review, and THEMA. His book of nature writing, The Saltwater Wilderness (Oxford), won a San Diego Book Award. Essays of his have appeared in Sierra, California Wild, and the Los Angeles Times.

Vanstrum has written five novels and two story collections. Setting plays a major role in his character-driven fiction, work that often uses nature, music, or medical themes. His novels range from drama (Let Fall Thy Blade; Certain Stars Shot Madly) to historical fiction (Northern Liberties) to satire (S.I.C. Memorial). His latest work, Humboldt, a story set among the Northern California redwoods, is part roman noir, part satire, and part thriller.

A Minnesotan by birth, Vanstrum majored in music at Grinnell College in Iowa and attended U.C.S.D. medical school. He has spent most of his life in California, where he practices anesthesiology.

A professional nature photographer, he publishes images in numerous venues worldwide. Magazine credits include Audubon, Sierra, Terre Sauvage, National Geographic Traveler, National Wildlife, and Discover. The photographic stock agencies Animals Animals/Earth Scenes and Custom Medical Stock Photography represent his photographs.

Vanstrum, a pianist from age five, still practices daily and performs works from the classical, romantic, and modern repertoire on a regular basis. A student of Cecil Lytle and the late Nathan Schwartz, he plays both solo and chamber pieces.

The author, a lifelong surfer, has ridden waves in Hawaii, Mexico, Costa Rica, and Bali. Still riding a shortboard, he wipes out with great regularity.

Further information on Vanstrum’s writing, including book reviews; music, including concert schedules; and surfing, including a surf blog; appears at http://www.gvanstrum.com

"Glenn Vanstrum is a force of nature. In addition to being a published author (The Saltwater Wilderness, Oxford University Press, 2003), he is a concert pianist (and regularly performs complex pieces by Beethoven and Mozart in public venues near his home in San Diego), a highly regarded medical doctor, an accomplished surfer, an underwater photographer who has worked around the world, and a dedicated husband and father. Somehow, in this incredibly busy life, he continually produces exemplary works of fiction and non-fiction.

"I've known Glenn for fifteen years. In that time, I have read every single one of his books, and they are uniformly excellent. His fiction is distinguished by fast-paced plots, fascinating characters, amazingly realistic dialogue, and passages of great strength and beauty. His innovative treatment (in Northern Liberties) of Thomas Eakins' painting 'The Gross Clinic' was absolutely brilliant, and his collection of animal stories is par excellence--certainly in the league with such notables as Roger Caras and Ernest Thompson Seton.

"His non-fiction, best exemplified in the essays of The Saltwater Wilderness, reflects his love for the sea and dedication to the conservation of oceanic resources. In summary, any book by Glenn Vanstrum is worth reading and owning, and I enthusiastically encourage all those who value contemporary literature to explore the corpus--now available as e-books or print-on-demand--of this gifted American author. "

--John A. Murray, senior editor, The Bloomsbury Review (1987-present); founding editor, the Sierra Club American Nature Writing annual (1994-2005); former director, graduate program in professional writing, University of Alaska; author of 42 books; recipient of Southwest Book Award and Colorado Book Award.