How "The Blue Death" Book Came About...
In the fall of 2000, a student approached me with a question as I was packing my bags after a lecture at Harvard School of Public Health. My lectures on drinking water and health each spring and fall had become something of a tradition for me. This was my primary area of research and I had published several controversial papers on the subject. I felt it essential that recent science such as studies of chlorine and cancer be placed in its historical context and had used the lectures as an excuse to explore the history of water and health, digging a bit deeper each time. This particular student had been intrigued by the story that emerged and had asked innocently enough if there was a book he could read that told that story in greater detail. “This is really important stuff,” he observed.
I had spent almost twenty years working, studying and conducting research in environmental sciences and public health and had come to realize that explaining what we know about public health to a general public is at least as important as advancing the frontiers of knowledge. Toward that end, I had started in on several different writing projects, but had yet to find just the right topic. As I drove home from that lecture, the voices of every writing teacher I had ever had echoed in my head. Write what you know. This student had just handed me the topic for my first book. As anyone in publishing knows, however, the road to publication is littered with unfinished books.
The other force that started this book in motion came from a pair of one-year-old twins who were waiting for me at home while that student asked his provocative question. My wife, Astrid, had just joined the faculty in radiation oncology at Harvard Medical School and the stress and strain of managing two demanding careers in academic medicine while raising twin infants was proving untenable. The need for a change became more clear with each passing day so, the following spring, we made the decision that she would look for a career in private practice and I would try to establish myself as a writer. This would ensure that one of us would have a flexible schedule and could take care of issues that arose with the twins.
So, in the winter of 2002, I resigned my position in academia and that spring we moved to Spokane, Washington. I spent much of that summer in stark terror as I digested what it meant to step off into space as I had just done and how every day I spent trying to become a writer would make it more difficult to return to academia. I was still an adjunct faculty member at Tufts Medical School, but climbing back in the saddle would be no simple task. I had spent some 30 years in school to earn an MD and a PhD and now had no job, no book contract, no publisher, and no agent. When people asked me what I did, I wasn’t even sure how to answer. It didn’t feel right to call myself a writer even though I was spending every spare moment trying to put together a book proposal.
In the fall of 2002, I got my first glimmer of hope when Nat Sobel read my proposal and agreed to represent me. About a month later, fate took action. Astrid was pregnant again. With twins.
Knowing that my time was about to become drastically limited, I struggled to complete my proposal as quickly as circumstances would allow. I sent what I had hoped were the final pieces of the proposal off to Nat just before Sage and Skyler were born in July of 2003. Nat responded that he wanted one more chapter.
I wrote much of that chapter lying in a king bed next to two babies while I waited for one or the other to wake up screaming for something. To make matters worse, Sage had been born with an enlarged heart and required special care, medication three times a day and regular trips to the cardiologist. Then, late in the fall of 2003, Nat called to tell me that Dan Conaway at Harper Collins was interested in the book. I had just a few months to enjoy the good news and to start working with Dan when disaster struck.
In the spring of 2004, one day after Easter, Sage was diagnosed with leukemia. The oncologist gave him a 50% chance of living and our only hope of saving him was a devastating course of chemotherapy. In other words, Sage and a parent would be spending most of the next year in the hospital and, if we were lucky and the drugs and the leukemia didn’t kill him, he might be alive at the end of the year.
As if this were not enough, we had just made a decision to move to Seattle. In other words, we now faced caring for twin infants, one of whom was gravely ill, selling our house, finding a house, and moving, not to mention caring for two five year olds. Oh and by the way, I had a book to write.
Well, we moved, the children settled into kindergarten and Sage soldiered through chemotherapy, almost dying twice. Much of the book was written late at night in the oncology ward as I waited for him to vomit again or for his heart monitor to sound one of its many alarms, or the nurse to come and give him more poison. The rest was written in stolen moments while the children were asleep or under someone else’s care.
So, you hold in your hand, some five years of blood, sweat and tears. I have staked my reputation and my career on every word.
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