Fortnight on Maxwell Street: A Selected Bibliography

April 24th, 2018
 
Fortnight on Maxwell Street is a reluctant hero’s journey of fear and courage set in Chicago in the spring of 1968. 24-year-old medical student Nick Weissman spends two weeks delivering babies in the kitchens and bedrooms of the inner-city’s slum tenements. Over his head medically, and unprotected in one of America’s most dangerous neighborhoods, his character and resourcefulness are tested in the extreme when a national tragedy intervenes.
 
The young white protagonist steps into his racial fear, testing his fledgling professionalism and his honor to care for a black family in grave danger. The embodiment of racial hatred, James Earl Ray, moves in parallel with Nick, stalking Martin Luther King, Jr., killing him and igniting the urban chaos that is the setting for the climax of the story. David Kerns will discuss Fortnight on Maxwell Street on Tuesday May 1 at 6pm at 57th Street Books.
 
Maxwell Street: Survival in a Bazaar, by Ira Berkow
 
The Year the Dream Died: Revisiting 1968 in America, by Jules Witcover
 
Hellhound on his Trail: The Electrifying Account of the Largest Manhunt in American History, by Hampton Sides - The definitive account of the stalking and assassination of Dr. King.
 
About David Kerns: David Kerns retired a decade ago from his career as a senior hospital executive and Stanford medical professor to devote himself full-time to writing. For the past six years he has been a columnist and feature writer for the Napa Valley Register. Born and educated in Chicago, his inspiration for Fortnight on Maxwell Street was his own two-week Northwestern medical student rite of passage at the Chicago Maternity Center on the city’s West Side.
Posted in: