"A moving tapestry of the doctors, the patients, and their lovers, both gay and straight, caught up in the AIDS epidemic . . . compassionate, intelligent." —Bill Barich, author of Long Way Home
This breakout book by Mark A. Jacobson, a leading Bay Area HIV/AIDS physician, follows three people from vastly different backgrounds, who are thrown together by a shared urgency to find out what is killing so many men in the prime of their lives. Kevin, a gay medical resident from working class Boston, has moved to San Francisco in search of acceptance of his sexual identity. Herb, a middle-aged supervising physician at one of the nation's toughest hospitals, struggles with his own emotional rigidity. And Gwen, a divorced mother raising a teen daughter, is seeking a sense of self and security while endeavoring to complete her medical training. Mark A. Jacobson, a professor of medicine at the University of California San Francisco and attending physician at San Francisco General Hospital, began his internship in 1981, just days after the CDC first reported a mysterious, fatal disease affecting gay men.
"A moving story of doctors navigating the intersections of suffering, ambition and discovery." —Krista Bremer, author of A Tender Struggle
"Jacobson's novel weaves the story of three medical professionals whose lives are personally changed by the impact of the epidemic . . . Without doubt, Dr. Jacobson is dispensing good medicine to his readers." — New York Journal of Books
**"This riveting drama poignantly captures the raw emotions at the intersection of patients, health professionals, and a society unprepared for a new epidemic." —**Diane Havlir, MD, Chief, UCSF Division of HIV, Infectious Diseases and Global Medicine at San Francisco General Hospital
Industry Reviews
"A powerful and impressive work of fiction that evokes with authenticity the bad and the good for those who were there." —Eric Goosby, MD United States Global AIDS Coordinator, 2009–13
"In Sensing Light, Mark Jacobson creates a moving tapestry of the doctors, the patients, and their lovers, both gay and straight, caught up in the AIDS epidemic. A compassionate, intelligent novel, part medical thriller that only someone who was there from the start could've written." —Bill Barich, staff writer for The New Yorker, 1980–95, and author of Big Dreams: Into the Heart of California
“The AIDS epidemic emerges at Ground Zero—San Francisco in the 1980s. This riveting drama poignantly captures the raw emotions at the intersection of patients, health professionals, and a society unprepared for a new epidemic.” —Diane Havlir, MD. Chief, UCSF Division of HIV, Infectious Diseases and Global Medicine at San Francisco General Hospital
“Sensing Light by Mark Jacobson, a doctor who worked with early HIV-infected patients and continues to practice medicine today, is a compelling story of the onset of the AIDS epidemic shown through the eyes of three doctors at a San Francisco public hospital. Although historical fiction, the novel reads like a creative non-fiction exploration of the pathos and uncertainty of those early days when gay men were dying and no one could figure out why. The characters are all too human; their battles both internal and external as they attempt to make sense of the horror around them." —Gayle Shanks, co-owner of Changing Hands Bookstore, Phoenix, AZ, and former president of the American Booksellers Association
