Life and death are spun to poetry in A Doctor Dies and Other Stories. A legless veteran leaves footprints in the snow. Boys carry the casket of a friend up ice-covered church steps. A son asks to dress his deceased father in boots and jacket as he and his mother await the funeral director on a winter morning. A boy finds a pop sickle stick lodged in the ice on a February day. For Evelyn and Smiley, a romantic taunt on a frigid night stops time between Ted's Dairy and Vietnam.
Within these 15 stories, Joseph Chamberlin, also the author of My Father Frank, the Story of a Priest, the Woman He Loved, and the Sons They Left Behind, builds a world of ordinary heroes.