Carol Cassella Doctor, mother, and novelist

photo credit: Raymond Gendreau

Author Biography

Carol Cassella is a practicing anesthesiologist and novelist.
Continue Reading »

Influences

As a mother (two sets of twins!) I would have to put my children on the top of the list of what influences my writing. Once I had children, everything else about my life and, indeed about the world, took on a more profound degree of meaning and vulnerability. I'm also very influenced by my work as a doctor. Being a physician allows me to be at least transiently close to people I would never otherwise meet. It has made me intimately aware of how quickly a life can be taken or saved.

"Oxygen": Patients don't feel the pain, but main character does

Date of Review:

06/27/2008

Published Work:

Oxygen

Reviewer:

Wingate Packard

Source:

Seattle Times

Review Excerpt:

In Carol Cassella's strong first novel, the protagonist, Dr. Marie Heaton, is an anesthesiologist in a fictional Seattle hospital whose life is turned upside down by the death of a child on the operating table on her watch. In "Oxygen", a malpractice suit ensues; but when criminal charges are filed against Heaton, the stakes are dramatically raised.

Cassella's musings on medicine are astute and probing . . . The ethics of the drama, and Cassella's portrayal of the very real and contemporary flaws in our health-care system, make this novel a promising debut.