Grady Memorial Hospital, one of America's major teaching hospitals, opened in 1892 to serve "the underserved of Atlanta."
The author, a naive young man arrives at Grady to drive the ambulance before starting medical school. Four years later he begins his surgical training as an intern.
It was a time of dramatic social transformation from the Jim Crow era of the racially segregated 1950s to the Civil Rights movement and the racially integrated 1960s.
As a young surgeon-in-training, he is confronted daily with tragedy and threads of humor and must learn to reconcile the conflicting experiences while providing care for an often forgotten and neglected population.