Riveting, heartbreaking, sometimes difficult, always inspiring. The New York Times Book Review

The Beauty in Breaking takes us into the life in an emergency room the drama, the adrenaline, the emotion with such immediacy that I could not help but be completely enthralled by the individual stories of the patients that Michele Harper treats. But this powerful, poignant page-turner of a book also tells a much larger and universal story about how healing actually happens, not just for broken bodies but for broken hearts and souls. In sharing the stories of her patients and her own life, Harper shows us that that healing begins only after we are broken open ourselves. And she shows us with hopeful, heartbreaking clarity that it comes from healing each other. Kerry Egan, author of On Living

The Beauty in Breaking is a compelling page-turner about how Dr. Michele Harper took a broken childhood and wove herself into a strong, honest, compassionate doctor. A must read. Louann Brizendine, MD, author of The Female Brain

Tackling such painful subjects as domestic abuse, trauma, and racism with grace and wisdom, this eloquent book probes the human condition as it chronicles a woman s ever evolving spiritual journey. A profoundly humane memoir from a thoughtful doctor.   Kirkus Reviews

Taking on the painful topics of trauma, domestic abuse, and the ubiquitous microaggressions faced by people of color, Harper witnesses the resilience of the human spirit of her patients and begins her own process of self-healing. . . . This powerful story will resonate with readers.   Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Harper s words inspire hope and understanding of the importance of peace and acceptance of the past. Poignant, helpful, and encouraging, [her] lessons from life in and outside of the emergency room ultimately teach readers how to trust the healing process.   Library Journal

In this illuminating memoir, an African American emergency room doctor finds that her patients stories lead her to make connections between her work and the larger world. Shelf Awareness

A book for our times, Harper s debut is a compelling memoir about her life as a Black woman emergency room doctor and how that work overlaps with the complexities of life. Harper explores hurt and healing, race and gender, justice and hope with candor and compassion. Ms. Magazine

Inspiring. Parade

A moving, beautifully written memoir. New York Post

Dr. Harper:

The View from Here

It wasn't at all how I had pictured graduation from my emergency medicine residency at Mercy Hospital in the South Bronx would be, but it certainly was a blistering end. I sat near the aisle, next to my mother, who was next to my stepfather. I had told my brother and sister not to bother with the trip. I figured my sister would be busy with her obligations as an army lieutenant. I assumed that my brother would be preoccupied with his family or with landscaping his new home. That's what I told myself. The truth was closer to my not wanting them to see me like this. I didn't want witnesses there to confirm that this had really happened, that this celebration I had looked forward to for the last four years of medical school, and then during the four years of residency, felt more like a funeral. There was a noticeable absence by my side, where I had always imagined my husband would have stood.

Husband. The word cut like a slur.

Ex-husband was more accurate. The last time I spent time with Dan was in May, in our twelve-hundred-square-foot, two-bedroom prewar co-op in the South Bronx. Our marriage was unmistakably over, but we had continued cohabitating because my move to Pennsylvania was still more than one month away, just after graduation. (Neither Dan nor I had the money for another place at that time with the sale of our co-op still pending.)

We had previously settled on Philadelphia. Our families were in the Northeast, and we were Northeasterners at heart. New York City was too expensive, anything north of New York was too cold, and anything south of DC was no longer the North. Most of New Jersey was far too suburban, and the parts that offered big-city comforts were just as expensive as New York City. This had left only Philadelphia, which had easy access to New York, DC, New Jersey, and Maryland, and had a reasonable cost of living compared to its competition. Neither one of us had ever lived there, but it seemed to make the most sense on paper. I didn't know anyone in Philadelphia, but Dan's parents had just moved to one of its bedroom communities, and he had a couple of friends who lived nearby.

We had deferred every other decision until after my residency-when one member of a couple is in residency, the couple is in residency-but now all that would change. In our new city, I had imagined we would walk over cobblestone streets hand in hand. Ginkgo leaves would waft gently onto the sidewalks as we passed. We'd try all the new restaurants because we'd finally be able to afford them. I couldn't wait to advertise all our starter IKEA furniture on Craigslist and purchase the type of furniture an adult woman actually wanted to pack up and take with her when she relocated. Our home's style would be a mix of elegant and eco-industrial. We'd burn candles all the time, vanilla and spiced amber to start. We'd finally have placemats, napkins, and sleek new flatware. We'd wander the city museums on Wednesdays and host dinner parties on Fridays. We'd enjoy our discretionary income and then, after a couple of years, we could discuss having kids.

So our split could have been a scene from a terrible indie film, the one where the perfect, young, progressive New York City couple-the white independent filmmaker husband and the black physician wife who had met at Harvard's freshman ice-cream social-endure a shocking, painful breakup. The couple has already overcome so much when, only months before she graduates from her residency, with a planned move to Philadelphia to be near his friends and family, he lowers the boom.

"You're doing well in your career, and I'm not," he told me that night. "If I'm with you, I'll focus on your success. I have to find myself. The only way I can do that is if I'm not with you. You'll be fine in Philadelphia. I can't go."

It felt like a cliche, a plot point that everybody else but the main characters themselves s

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

A New York Times Notable Book

Riveting, heartbreaking, sometimes difficult, always inspiring. The New York Times Book Review

An incredibly moving memoir about what it means to be a doctor. Ellen Pompeo

As seen/heard on Fresh Air, The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, NBC Nightly News, MSNBC, Weekend Edition, and more

An emergency room physician explores how a life of service to others taught her how to heal herself.

Michele Harper is a female, African American emergency room physician in a profession that is overwhelmingly male and white. Brought up in Washington, D.C., in a complicated family, she went to Harvard, where she met her husband. They stayed together through medical school until two months before she was scheduled to join the staff of a hospital in central Philadelphia, when he told her he couldn t move with her. Her marriage at an end, Harper began her new life in a new city, in a new job, as a newly single woman.

In the ensuing years, as Harper learned to become an effective ER physician, bringing insight and empathy to every patient encounter, she came to understand that each of us is broken physically, emotionally, psychically. How we recognize those breaks, how we try to mend them, and where we go from there are all crucial parts of the healing process.

The Beauty in Breaking is the poignant true story of Harper s journey toward self-healing. Each of the patients Harper writes about taught her something important about recuperation and recovery. How to let go of fear even when the future is murky: How to tell the truth when it s simpler to overlook it. How to understand that compassion isn t the same as justice. As she shines a light on the systemic disenfranchisement of the patients she treats as they struggle to maintain their health and dignity, Harper comes to understand the importance of allowing ourselves to make peace with the past as we draw support from the present. In this hopeful, moving, and beautiful book, she passes along the precious, necessary lessons that she has learned as a daughter, a woman, and a physician.
Michele Harper has worked as an emergency room physician for more than a decade at various institutions, including as chief resident at Lincoln Hospital in the South Bronx and in the emergency department at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Philadelphia. She is a graduate of Harvard University and the Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook University. The Beauty in Breaking is her first book.