Sensing Light

"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