Title: Five Days at Memorial

Author: Sheri Fink

Publisher: Crown Publishers 2013

Genre: Nonfiction

Pages: 558

Rating:  5/5 stars

Reading Challenges: 52 Books - W47

In the tradition of the best investigative journalism, physician and reporter Sheri Fink reconstructs 5 days at Memorial Medical Center and draws the reader into the lives of those who struggled mightily to survive and maintain life amid chaos. After Katrina struck and the floodwaters rose, the power failed, and the heat climbed, exhausted caregivers chose to designate certain patients last for rescue. Months later, several of those caregivers faced criminal allegations that they deliberately injected numerous patients with drugs to hasten their deaths.

Five Days at Memorial, the culmination of six years of reporting, unspools the mystery of what happened in those days, bringing the reader into a hospital fighting for its life and into a conversation about the most terrifying form of health care rationing.

Been meaning to pick this one up for months and I finally got around to it. What an amazingly thought-provoking book. Definitely a 5 star read. Fink's research into reconstructing what actually happened at Memorial during and after Hurricane Katrina is detailed and thorough. We journey with the employees and patients through the harrowing experience of a breakdown in communication and survival. It took me two weeks to get through, not because he's a bad book, but because there is so much information to process. Very fascinating. I warn potential readers that the topic is very heavy. This is not a good beach read.