"A fascinating novel about one of America's greatest and most inventive surgeons and his lifelong struggle with drug dependency... A moving testament to love, patience, and the overwhelming grip of addiction."

-- Jennie Fields, Author of Atomic Love and The Age of Desire

“A true-to-life love story that illuminates an intriguing woman’s life, the life of her brilliant physician husband, and the wretched secret they share. The author brings deft insights and personal knowledge of medicine to this tale of talent, ambition, obsession, and powerlessness. Meticulously researched and rendered in compelling dual narratives, Till Taught by Pain is the style of historical novel I most admire: one that holds true to the history and the real characters underpinning it while pulling the reader magically into their world. Susan Coventry a master of the form”.

—Rilla Askew, author of Prize for the Fire

“A fascinating novel about one of America’s greatest and most inventive surgeons and his lifelong struggle with drug dependency. Told through his point of view and his wife’s, it’s a moving testament to love, patience and the overwhelming grip of addiction.”

—Jennie Fields, author of Atomic Love and The Age of Desire

“Susan Coventry’s compelling novel Till Taught by Pain plunges us into the world of medicine in New York City and Baltimore’s new Johns Hopkins Hospital in the 1880s and the emergence of a brilliant young doctor who, while researching cocaine as a local anesthetic, becomes addicted first to it and then morphine. Based on history and drawing from diaries and letters long locked away, Dr. William Halsted is an unforgettable character, marching through the shadows of early operating and research rooms, alternatingly making brilliant strides, and then once again locked in his own agonizing darkness. Even the support of his physician friends and the love of Halsted’s clear-minded and devoted head nurse who becomes his wife, cannot entirely defeat the call of his secret syringes. An utterly engrossing story of a small group of people in medicine well over a hundred years ago. I was so sorry when the story ended, not wanting to leave the company of this difficult doctor who achieved the near perfection he sought in the operating room but never in himself.”

—Stephanie Cowell, author of The Boy in the Rain, Claude & Camille, and The Physician of London. Winner of an American Book Award.

“With the skill of a surgeon, Susan Coventry stitches together an in-depth historical fiction novel about Dr. William Halsted, a brilliant physician whose many contributions to modern medicine were remarkable. Coventry infuses the complicated characters of Halsted and his wife Caroline with authentic love and heart-rending frustration. Anyone who’s dealt with addiction or who’s loved someone struggling with addiction will find an honest, yet compassionate portrait of a gifted man, who though he soared so high, might have achieved even more.”

—Tracey D. Buchanan, author of Toward the Corner of Mercy and Peace

“This elegant double-biography, in the form of a novel, evokes the world of the unsung heroes who pioneered modern surgery. Along the way, TILL TAUGHT BY PAIN intelligently and fascinatingly explores the complexities of drug addiction in the context of ambition and a challenging but ultimately redemptive marriage.”

—Mitchell James Kaplan, author of By Fire, By Water, Rhapsody: A Novel, and Into the Unbounded Night