Dr. Lizzy Buckthorn completes her psychiatric residency at Stanford and begins her work at a large regional hospital in the Oklahoma Panhandle. Lizzy is a brilliant young doctor but new to the demands of a state hospital and the rural population it serves. She also happens to have lost an arm to cancer as a child and is subject to the prejudices of a community that is not used to a woman psychiatrist, much less a disabled one. Her patients include a priest who has lost his religious beliefs, an older couple that has lost sexual intimacy, and a mother who blames herself for the loss of her young girls in an auto accident. Her close friend also struggles with an unexpected pregnancy. With time and determination, Lizzy learns how to help patients achieve what Lizzy believes is most important: self-acceptance. Now she must deal with her most difficult and painful patient, a teenage boy, struggling to find himself under the domineering presence of his conservative minister father.
About the Author: Edward Correia is a Washington, D.C. attorney and President of a law firm, Correia & Osolinik. He is also an Adjunct Professor at American University's Washington College of Law. He was an attorney with Latham & Watkins, LLP, for ten years before starting his own firm. Correia worked as a senior lawyer for the Senate Judiciary Committee, serving as Chief Counsel for Senator Howard Metzenbaum of Ohio and Chief Counsel and Staff Director of the Senate Antitrust Subcommittee. He also served in the Clinton Administration as Special Counsel to the President for Civil Rights in the White House. Correia was a Professor of Law at Northeastern University School of Law in Boston and was selected as the law school's first Urban Law and Public Policy Distinguished Professor. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and serves as Co-Chair of its Public Policy Committee. In 2010, he was given a Distinguished Alumni Award by the University of Oklahoma College of Arts and Sciences. Correia is the author of THE UNCERTAIN BELIEVER: RECONCILING GOD AND SCIENCE (2009, 2011), a novel, THE GEORGE WASHINGTON CONSTELLATION (2012), TEACHING YOUR CHILD ABOUT GOD IN A SCIENTIFIC WORLD (2012), and a sequel to his first novel, ELYSIA, released in 2014. Correia has also published over thirty articles on legal and policy topics. Correia lives with his wife Carolyn Osolinik in Bethesda, Maryland. They have three children, Max, Lilla and Mim.