Who has the right to live? Who should decide? Bestselling author Jillian Medoff explores the human cost of impossible choices in a dazzling novel inspired by a controversial true story.
In 1961, dialysis could save lives, but it was available to only a handful of patients. That summer, seven Seattle citizens—a pastor, a surgeon, a lawyer, a labor leader, a housewife, a banker, and a city official—were asked to perform an unprecedented act of public service. Privately known as the “Life or Death Committee,” they were given the task of deciding which gravely ill patients would receive this groundbreaking treatment—and which ones would be denied.
Within the committee’s closed world, each member carries private burdens. Among them: a beloved councilman with a devastating secret; a housewife starved for purpose; a pastor haunted by his father’s violence; and a surgeon whose service in the Korean War left him unable to feel. As hidden connections emerge and loyalties shift, their fragile alliance is threatened by scrutiny from Life magazine and the compromises they have made in the name of fairness.
With uncanny psychological insight and gripping narrative force, Medoff confronts urgent questions of responsibility, conscience, and what it means to be a good person. Sweeping yet intimate, The Life or Death Committee is an ambitious novel about secrecy, moral judgment, and the choices that bind us to one another and forever alter how we understand ourselves.
