Blogs

In Poised, Cheryl Bailey’s debut novel set in 1990s Kentucky, a naïve but spirited doctor, Shelly Riley, slogs through a two-year fellowship. Continually hampered by chauvinist mentors and exhausting training, she battles for the lives of her cancer patients. Without the approval of her all-male mentors, she’ll never practice in her specialized field.

Readers will relish the book’s coming-of-age trope based on American society’s fascination with what really happens in hospitals and operating rooms. Like Bonnie Garmus’ Lessons in Chemistry, Bailey gives us a quirky, loveable scientist who shakes off dismissive societal assumptions so she can get down to work. The book’s humor soothes the sting of difficult life circumstances encountered by Shelly, her medical peers in training and her beloved patients.

Cancer care isn't funny, but people are, and Shelly’s devotion to her patients makes Poised sing.

Bailey writes from her home in Saint Paul, Minnesota, where she lives with her husband, sons, mother and two disgracefully behaved dogs. She's a retired gynecologic oncologist who relished her decades of caring for women with ovarian and endometrial cancer.

When not writing, she works for the Minnesota Board of Medical Practice and the League of Women Voters Saint Paul. She also sings alto in the Mill City Singers choir led by J.D. and Fred Steele, and plays flute in the JCC Symphony orchestra conducted by Chi-Chi Bestmann. Her short stories have been published in The Intima, a narrative medicine journal.