Excerpt from Gemini by Carol Cassella, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

The doctor who'd called Charlotte to request the transfer four days after Jane's accident had sounded young and exhausted. Charlotte had caught the note of regret in his voice, almost defensive, anticipating blame. She knew they were begging for doctors out on the peninsula—towns built on timber and fishing now collapsing along with those industries, three or four hours and a million cultural miles from the city. The doctors they could hire were often new graduates, and the best of them burned out within a few years. And how much of every doctor's education happens after he leaves medical school? Half or more, Charlotte thought. More. The guy was in over his head, doing the best he could in a rural, underfunded hospital. Reading these notes, she felt almost as bad for him as she did for Jane. After they fixed her leg they'd taken her to the ICU, still unconscious, still chemically paralyzed by anesthesia drugs. A day had passed balancing her fluids, transfusing blood, and then another day weaning her off sedatives, trying to figure out why her oxygen levels were so low. But she didn't wake up. Another head CT showed no bleed, no midline shift, nothing to explain it. And on the third day, when Jane was still unconscious, when her white blood cell count started going up and her lungs started getting stiff, a storm had blackened the coastline and flying her out was impossible.

Excerpted from Gemini by Carol Cassella. Copyright © 2014 by Carol Cassella. Excerpted by permission of Simon & Schuster. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.