The Healer's Heart

By Diane Komp and Diane M. Komp

Book Overview

A contemporary look at the spiritual journey of a doctor named Luke that thoughtfully brings the Gospel physician into our 21st-century world.

If you have no cause worth dying for, do you have a reason to live?

While sorting through family papers following his father's massive stroke, Dr. Luke Tayspill, Yale Medical School's top infectious disease specialist, stumbles across a manuscript written decades earlier by his beloved grandfather. The book bears an ominous title, The Deaths of Lukas Tayspill--not death, but deaths.

A closer inspection reveals that the book is about three characters with the same name. The first two Lucas Tayspills were 19th century Quakers who suffered martyrs' deaths. The third story--set in the future--ends abruptly with the arrival of a Dr. Lucas Tayspill in a plague-ridden, war torn African land. Was his grandfather foretelling Luke's own life story--and prophesying his death?

Luke sets out on a deeply personal journey to Sierra Leone. But his pilgrimage to understand death leads to a powerful and unexpected encounter with the essence of life. Will Luke fulfill his grandfather's vision?

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1578569133
• ISBN13: 9781578569137
• Release Date: February 2006
• Publisher: Waterbrook Press
• Length: 342 Pages
• Weight: 0.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.6" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

Interesting and inspirational

The characters in this book keep your attention as I was never sure exactly what they were going to do. At the same time, they seemed real enough that I could picture them in their settings, or I would know them if they walked into a room. I found the story, or stories, as several things seemed to be happening, original and fresh. Yet, they were things that are real in our world and need to be told. I read this book in two days. I recommend it.

strong modern day retelling of the St. Luke story

Yale University Medical School Infectious Disease specialist Dr. Luke Tayspill visits his dying father in Ohio. Being there makes him wonder how his currently estranged journalist wife Theo is dong in London, where she deals with a strange physical diagnosis that she hides from Luke and from the post-traumatic stress disorder caused when she covered war ravaged Sarajevo. He further reflects back on his childhood when his father showed no positive emotions while his grandfather gave him a zest for life. Inside a secret compartment of a locked desk, Luke finds a hidden manuscript "The Deaths of Lukas Tayspill" written by his late loving grandfather Giles, he is shocked not just by the title, but also by the revelations of two ancestry Luke Tayspills dying martyr deaths and the tale of a third to be completed in the near future. He decides to finish the story his grandfather set forth in the journal. Seeking closure, Luke travels to war wracked Sierra Leone where his grandfather's story started but he will "write" the ending with his actions in this devastated African nation. THE HEALER'S HEART is a strong modern day retelling of the St. Luke story that fans will appreciate. Luke is a terrific protagonist whose discovery of the journal opens his mind to all sorts of possibilities when one believes in Jesus while performing good deeds. Though the story line contains too many subplots in too many different periods that at times makes it difficult to follow, Diane M. Komp provides a strong character driven look at faith in the modern age. Harriet Klausner