Published on 20th August 2024, The Blighted Son tells the extraordinary story of heart transplant recipient James Fisher, whose lifesaving surgical procedure has entirely unexpected consequences.
Invited to witness a lifesaving heart transplant operation, journalist Edwin Benn is thrilled to be in on the action. But when it comes to interviewing the fortunate recipient, Edwin finds himself questioning whether the man was worth saving. A white supremacist neo-Nazi with a track record of hate crimes, James Fisher is anything but pleasant to be around, and is furious when he discovers the identity of his heart donor, going to absurd lengths to ‘make it his own’ by having a swastika tattooed on his chest.
Appalled by the man’s behaviour, Edwin struggles to write his article without mentioning that racist Fisher did not deserve his donor heart. But as Edwin continues to follow Fisher’s recovery, he discovers that the man he first interviewed has changed
dramatically, and as he continues to report on the story, he becomes increasingly involved in helping him reconnect with his long-forgotten past.
Peter Harris
MJA member and author of The Blighted Son, Peter Harris says:
“The Blighted Son was inspired by an amalgam of three real-life factors: my former role as Health and Medical Correspondent of the Manchester Evening News; my first book God’s Sabbatical Years, a Holocaust memoir that tells the story of a Manchester man who survived several concentration camps, and my personal intertest in genealogy – tracing by own paternal roots in Eastern Europe.
I was privileged to witness and report on the first heart transplant operation at Wythenshawe Hospital, Manchester, in my former capacity as a journalist for the Manchester Evening News. After some 25 years, I left the paper to open my own press and public relations company, and for several years I handled the public relations for the hospital’s New Heart New Start Appeal, the charity that supported the heart transplant programme.
It became clear to me that donor hearts are selected on the basis clinical assessment – tissue type, gender and age, ethnicity – but that lifestyle, political views and personality are never part of that equation. It implanted the idea in my mind that that it was quite probable a transplant recipient could receive the heart of donor with views totally opposed to his or her own.”
Published by Cranthorpe Millner Publishers, The Blighted Son (ISBN: 978-1-80378-225-6) is published on 20th
August 2024 and is available in paperback (£10.99) and eBook format.
Waterstones | Amazon | Cranthorpe Millner
Social Media links:
Facebook: Peter Maxwell Harris
Twitter: @libramax09
LinkedIn: Peter Harris
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