Are You Sammy Stein? follows a thoughtful, observant teenager growing up in 1970s Montreal. Told with humor and a nostalgic eye, the novel explores childhood, family, first love, and the resilience required to come of age.
Are You Sammy Stein?
A coming-of-age novel set in
1970s Montreal
by Michael Ruckenstein
About
Michael Ruckenstein is a surgeon and novelist whose work is character driven and rooted in memory, family, and moral consequence. After decades of writing and editing medical texts and academic work, he was encouraged by one of his trainees to expand his vistas to include creative fiction. His debut novel, Are You Sammy Stein?, draws on observation and lived experience to explore childhood and coming of age in 1970s Montreal. He is currently at work on his second novel, a medical psychological thriller.
Do Over
Mickey Bloom’s life is a testament to underachievement and failure. Now, in his mid 30s, he lives in his dilapidated, childhood home and teaches science in the high school from which he graduated. At night, he tends bar for his friend to escape the fact that at 36, his life offers no real future. As a patron of the bar reminds him, his life is in need of a ‘Do Over.’
Jonathan Frank a highly successful cardiac surgeon and researcher, awakens in his hospital’s call room disoriented and confused. He is being called to a cardiac emergency, which he would gladly attend if only he could remember who he was and why he was in a hospital. As Jonathan tries desperately to recover his memory, he must find ways to deal with a dictatorial Chief of Surgery, a Russian oligarch and his henchmen, the FBI, and 4 female colleagues, all of whom seem to have their own agendas. On the brink of a potential lifesaving discovery, Jonathan must determine who are his friends and who are his foes, and why, despite of his objective successes, someone determined that his life was also in need of a ‘Do Over’!