An incidental and shocking discovery of a cave with tiny unmarked graves shatters the peace of Exton, a small town in upstate N.Y. More horrifying is the forensic analysis that reveals that these young children died needlessly as the result of neglect and abuse at the hands of a religious fundamentalist cult that disavows medical care. Evangelicals and their political action groups come to the defense of the cult and the parents of the dead children setting the stage for the final courtroom clash to come. The sheriff, an investigative reporter, the local coroner and two forensic experts from Albany develop the case. When the county DA, a fundamentalist Christian, resists vigorous prosecution, the Governor of New York intervenes and appoints Rosemary and Calvin Brandt to represent the State and speak for the dead children. These controversial attorneys and former fundamentalists have devoted their lives to the protection of children. Evangelicals, through their political action groups, come to the defense of the Cult and the parents of the dead children, setting the stage for the final courtroom clash between freedom of religion and the State's responsibility to protect innocent children. Author's Note: If you believe that prayer for the sick to the exclusion of medical care is a thing of the past, think again. Each year children in the United States suffer horribly and die from injuries or medical conditions readily treated by physicians and hospitals. Do a literature search on faith healing or go to the website of "Children's Healthcare Is a Legal Duty, Inc." (www.childrenshealthcare.org) and you'll see a litany of horrors as a small segment of mostly fundamentalists allow their minor children to die from diabetes, pneumonia, asthma, and many other conditions all readily responsive to standard medical care.
About the Author: I was born in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn, moved to Queens, and then, as New Yorkers say, we ascended to the Island. After graduating from Valley Stream Central High School, I went to Adelphi, a college then, a university now, and then to medical school in Chicago. The war in Vietnam interrupted my postgraduate training with a year in Colorado Springs and another as a Battalion Surgeon in Vietnam. I spent seven months in the Central Highlands with the 4th Infantry and five months in an evacuation hospital in Long Binh outside Saigon where I ran the emergency room. I returned intact in 1968 to complete my training in internal medicine and diseases of the kidney, nephrology. I worked for twenty-three years in Berkeley, California in a hospital-based practice caring for patients with complicated illnesses often in ICU and served as Chief of Medicine. My wife Dorlis and I retired in October 1995 and sailed under the Golden Gate Bridge for a life at sea in Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean. Four years later, exhausted from repairing everything on board, (often many times) we sold the sailboat and within a year took the lazy man's out; we bought a Nordic Tug, a trawler. We motored around Florida, the Bahamas, the entire East Coast and completed two 'Circle trips' to Canada and back, eight months, the first time, five months, the second. I wrote professionally as a physician to inform but rarely to entertain, at least not on purpose. First, Do No Harm was published in April 2007. No Cure for Murder, the original version, was released in August 2011. (both available in print and Kindle) In the last two years, I've written three screenplays based on my novels and hope to see one or more produced for the screen. I submitted my screenplay, Rage to the 80th Annual Writer's Digest contest and won honorable mention (57 out of 11,000). We live in beautiful Grass Valley with 13 year old Mike, a terrier mix and Bennie, a 7 year old purebred Yorkie who, looks like he's on steroids, but he's not. Website: lawrencewgoldmd.com