In the Country of Hearts

Georgia cardiologist and poet Stone ( In All This Rain ) has heart, as readers who follow him into his consulting rooms will find. Drawing on 25 years of experience in treating patients, he recalls encounters with a wide variety of heart ailments and other diseases such as lupus, killer of novelist Flannery O'Connor, whose physician was his mentor. Stone deals reasonably with the healer's dilemmas: for example, should technology be utilized to prolong a life already lost? He ruminates as well on a vexed moral problem he unknowingly introduced in attempting to save the life of a severely burned arsonist who fabricated a tale that his injuries were caused by rescuing a child caught in a fire. A physician with a large talent for narration, Stone here establishes his place among his more famed literary brethren. (Sept.)