These spellbinding reminiscences trace the path of a Western-trained physician whose most profound lessons in healing came after he completed his formal training. Fresh out of medical school, Tim Fleming began practicing medicine on an isolated Arizona Indian reservation. The lessons he learned from the Hualapai and Havasupai people permanently changed his life and his career. After working with the Indian Health Service he was called to the passion and chaos of emergency medicine. Seventeen years later, he became a patient himself, battling a rare and progressive malignancy that killed him shortly after the first edition of this book was published in 1999.

"A healing book written from the heart like a prayer. It will move you."--Carl Hammerschlag, M.D., author of The Dancing Healers and The Theft of the Spirit

"Tim Fleming's writing and medical work made a common statement: Healing is art and art is healing. His writings about medicine, community, and himself are as powerful as they are provocative. We are all the richer for them."--Fitzhugh Mullan, M.D., author of Vital Signs: A Young Doctor's Struggle with Cancer and White Coat, Clenched Fist: The Political Education of an American Physician