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Cole Family Trilogy Series

This saga chronicles the journey of a man driven by an insatiable thirst for knowledge and healing, despite his orphaned past and challenging fate. Blessed with the foresight of death and a profound desire to cure, he navigates the intricate world of medieval England and Persia. The narrative explores his relentless pursuit of becoming a physician, his battles against disease, and his struggles with societal prejudices in a vibrant and often perilous era. Experience a compelling drama of courage, determination, and the quest for one's true calling.

Matters of Choice
Shaman
The Physician

Recommended Reading Order

  1. 1

    The Physician

    4.4(30004)Add rating

    Librarian note: An older cover for this edition can be found here: 5-Jun-2012. A child holds the hand of his dying mother and is terrified, aware something is taking her. Orphaned and given to an itinerant barber-surgeon, Rob Cole becomes a fast-talking swindler, peddling a worthless medicine. But as he matures, his strange gift—an acute sensitivity to impending death—never leaves him, and he yearns to become a healer. Arab madrassas are the only authentic medical schools, and he makes his perilous way to Persia. Christians are barred from Muslim schools, but claiming he is a Jew, he studies under the world’s most renowned physician, Avicenna. How the woman who is his great love struggles against her only rival—medicine—makes a riveting modern classic. The Physician is the first book in New York Times–bestselling author Noah Gordon’s Dr. Robert Cole trilogy, which continues with Shaman and concludes with Matters of Choice.

    The Physician
  2. 2

    Shaman

    • 652 pages
    • 23 hours of reading
    4.2(8935)Add rating

    Robert Jeremy Cole, the legendary doctor and hero of THE PHYSICIAN, left an enduring legacy. From the eleventh century on, the eldest son in each generation of the Cole family has borne the same first name and middle initial and many of these men have followed the medical profession. A few have been blessed with their ancestor's diagnostic skill and the 'sixth sense' they call The Gift, the ability to know instinctively when death is impending. The tragedy of Rob J.'s life is the deafness of his son, Robert Jefferson Cole, who is called Shaman by everyone who knows him. Shaman's life is difficult. First, he must learn to speak so that he can take his place in the hearing world, and then he must fight against the prejudices of a society where physical differences matter. As Shaman struggles to achieve his identity, the Coles, along with the rest of America, are drawn into the conflict between the North and the South.

    Shaman
  3. 3

    Matters of Choice

    3.8(4412)Add rating

    With Choices, Noah Gordon brings to a close his great trilogy spanning the generations of the Cole medical dynasty. Beginning with the legendary 11th-century doctor Robert J. Cole, each eldest son has borne the same name and middle initial, and some have possessed the uncanny "sixth sense" known as The Gift: the terrible and instinctive knowledge that someone is about to die. In Choices, it emerges again in the present, but this time in a daughter, Roberta Jeanne d'Arc Cole, known as R.J. The first time R.J. defies her beloved father is when she is born a female; the second, when she chooses to study law rather than medicine. Yet destiny is to overtake her when R.J. realizes that she has inherited The Gift. As she holds the hands of a sick man, R.J. feels a dreadful certainty that he is going to die; tragically, he is her own lover. Struggling with her grief, R.J. knows she must bow to the inevitable and become a physician. But her life changes when she moves to a small-town practice and is faced with a terrible dilemma -- and an important choice to make.

    Matters of Choice