The Match: Complete Strangers, A Miracle Face Transplant, Two Lives Transformed

Description

pp. 272, b/w photographs, “The book largely takes place in 2009, but Novak also flashes back to the donor’s and the recipient’s past lives: Joseph pretends to be crazy to avoid the draft, whereas future transplant recipient James Maki, a troubled mixed-race adoptee, volunteers to serve in Vietnam, where he gets hooked on heroin. In April 2009, Joseph—a Hollywood movie research entrepreneur—dies of a stroke while getting a heart transplant. His wife agrees to donate his facial tissue, unaware that Maki was an addict who destroyed his face when he fell on an electrified subway rail while high. At times the book seems disingenuous in its view of competition between hospitals, and Novak fails to adequately address the ethical issues involved in choosing a recipient of such an expensive procedure. But overall, this real-life Face/Off is a can’t-put-it-down tale”