From the publisher:
Like his friends Banting and Best, Dr. John
Fitzgerald was a Canadian hero. He founded Connaught Labs, saved untold
lives with his vaccines and transformed the idea of public health in
Canada and the world. What so darkened his reputation that his memory
has been all but erased?
A sensitive, withdrawn boy is born
into the gothic house of his long dead grandfather, a brilliant yet
tormented pathologist of Irish blood and epic accomplishment whose
memory has been mysteriously erased from public consciousness. As the
boy watches his own father - also an eminent doctor - plunge into a
suicidal psychosis, he intuits, as the psychiatrists do not, some
unspeakable secret buried like a tumour deep in the multi-generational
layers of the family unconscious. Growing into manhood, he knows in his
bones that he must stalk an ancient curse before it stalks him. To set
himself free, he must break the silence and put words to the page. His
future lies in the past.