Kate Scannell

Kate Scannell is a physician and author who lives, writes, and gardens in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is finally enjoying the focused time she’s promised herself to write the medical mysteries she's longed to tell. “Immortal Wounds—A Doctor Nora Kelly Mystery"—is the first in her series involving crack internist Dr. Nora Kelly and colleagues at fictional Oakland City Hospital (September, 2018). We begin a normal workday with Nora—as normal as it can be after the traumatic loss of her family two years ago. She steps into the ER at Oakland City Hospital, struggling with grief and self-doubt about her ability to continue practicing medicine. Early retirement, at age fifty-seven, increasingly appeals. But there’s a corpse in the admin suite, and havoc descends upon her and her colleagues. The mystery behind the mayhem draws Nora back into life and work, her once-renowned diagnostic acumen resurrecting under extreme peril. At the same time, her self-redemptive quest to solve the mystery unearths a deeply personal and painful question, one that reaches into the core of who she is and what she believes. The second-in-series, "Lethal Control," was published in September, 2021. Here, Nora is challenged when an anonymous blue patient is abandoned at the ER. Suspecting environmental toxins as the cause, she and her colleagues must outwit a powerful corporate adversary to diagnose her patient's peculiar discoloration and safeguard her community. Themes of environmental justice, homelessness, and immigration run through the mystery. Kate has published extensively in both lay and professional venues. She was also a regular opinion columnist (2000-2014; 2018-2020) for several Bay Area newspapers and their digital outlets, including “The Oakland Tribune” and “San Jose Mercury News” and "The East Bay Times." Her columns explored the ethical and sociopolitical dimensions of modern medicine and health care. In 1999, she published her memoir “Death of the Good Doctor—Lessons from the Heart of the AIDS Epidemic” (Cleis Press). The memoir relates her experiences serving as the medical director for one of the country's first hospital AIDS wards during the early HIV epidemic years (1985-1990) when most patients suffered quick deaths. Her memoir also recounts her coming-of-age as a woman physician during this unique time. After her memoir went out of print, she acquired its rights and published it in digital (2010) and paperback (2012) formats (2018, with photos). Kate also published the novel “Flood Stage,” a collection of twenty interrelated stories about people living in a diverse rural community in California whose lives are threatened when torrential rains overfill the local river. When flood stage arrives and apocalyptic flooding ensues, residents of this tight-knit community must make swift and painful decisions. Do they stay or flee? What do they choose to carry away, what do they leave behind? In moments of urgent reckoning, their unique personal histories are acted out on center stage while a universal human trauma unfolds. Kate loves medicine and patient care. She was board certified in Internal Medicine; Rheumatology; Geriatrics; and, Hospice and Palliative Medicine. She intends to stay close to these interests through her future writing. She invites you to visit her website at: www.katescannell.com