Raising Lazarus

This remarkable memoir by 43-year-old psychiatrist Pensack is really three stories in one: his battle to survive HCM (hypertrophic cardiomyopathy), a usually fatal hereditary disease of the heart muscle; the struggle to retain his sanity; and his simultaneous efforts to complete medical school. Collaborator Williams ably helps convey both Pensack's powers of observation and will to survive despite--or because of--his encounters with mortality. Accounts of heart failure, near-death episodes and months of waiting for an available replacement heart, followed in 1993 by the suspenseful, prolonged surgery at University Hospital in Denver, recovery, and beginning of what Pensack hopes will be a new life make for wrenching and engrossing reading. (Sept.)