Falling Into the Fire by Christine Montross
I first came to love Christine Montross—a poet-turned-scientist—with her first book, Body of Work—a hauntingly moving memoir about the relationship that formed with a cadaver named Eve that Montross is assigned to as first-year of medical student. In Falling Into the Fire, we jump forward years, and Montross is now a fully licensed psychiatrist practicing a critical care setting. Still a poet at heart, Montross approaches her patients and, in fact, mental illness as a whole, with inquisitiveness and compassion. Weaving in case-studies with history, memoir, and her own intimate struggles as a doctor, Falling Into the Fire is a wonderful window into the nature of psychiatry and the thin line between illness and the need for connection and understanding that is so imbedded in each of us.