Maggie Stiefvater's Reviews > Letters To A Young Doctor

Wise, fallible, excessive, hyperbolic, passionate, florid, amusing, touching, overwrought, heart-breaking, metaphorical, affirming. This set of essays (that I believe is still required reading for many medical programs) feels a bit like James Herriot for the physician set.

The last third goes a bit off the rails for me—in particular, there was one called "Imposter" that reminded me acutely of two recent reads that rubbed me wrong for the same reason, His Name was Death and A Severe Mercy: A Story of Faith, Tragedy, and Triumph, both full of flowery passages about an old and very period form of Christianity.

But in the first half in particular, there are essays I'll be thinking about for a very, very long time. Absolute stunners of emotional and authorial craft.