“Larry’s Kidney”
By Daniel Asa Rose
William Morrow, $25.99, 320 pages
The subtitle, “(Being the Story of) How I Found Myself in China With My Black Sheep Cousin and His Mail-Order Bride, Skirting the Law to Get Him a Transplant — and Save His Life” says it all.
Kidney disease and renal failure are no laughing matter, but as debate on the health-care bill rages in town meetings and organ transplants are hotly debated, perhaps the world needs a bit of levity. It’s a surprisingly fun, and moving, book with resonance when so many people die waiting for transplants every year. Rose offers a moral. “Don’t try to go to China for a kidney. We got the last one. However, you can take charge of your medical destiny,” he writes, and “it is entirely possible to save your own life, as Larry did.”
