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Dog in the Road

He thought he had the perfect life. Everything about it turned out to be wrong. 

Columbia, SC. Forty-something ER physician Sam Buchanan has gotten too comfortable in the lap of luxury. But when he discovers his wife is having an affair, he’s ashamed to realize he’s ended up a distant, selfish alcoholic. Vowing to redeem himself, he quits cold turkey, sells his possessions, and takes a job at a hospital in New Orleans.

Finding fresh opportunities and potential love, Sam reinvents himself in the Big Easy’s Uptown district. But news of the death of a friend he could have saved back in South Carolina shatters his confidence and knocks him off the wagon. And when a meddling acquaintance threatens his budding romance, Sam fears his demons may be too strong to defeat.

Can Sam kiss the bottle goodbye forever and finally become the person he wants to be?

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Advance Praise

"Fast-paced and riveting, Dog in the Road resonates with an authenticity that is grounded in author Dave Baehren’s stellar career in emergency medicine. As his characters’ lives play out in these pages, it’s clear that this is more than a story about the world of medicine. It’s a story about life."
— Christine Brennan, USA Today columnist

"I count myself lucky to have read Dog In The Road. This book is fundamentally perfect about life and self-discovery that words alone are not enough. It is something you need to experience and feel. The book goes beyond storytelling. It’s a light in the dark, the up when you’re down, a balm to soothe pain. It’s a thread of providence that invisibly binds life’s challenges and how others positively impact our journey."
— Colonel David W. Sutherland, US Army (Retired), Author, Bedu: Bedouin Boy, Poet King

"Dog in the Road provides the reader a chance to go on a journey with Dr. Sam Buchanan, an Emergency Room Physician, whose life in the trenches takes him from corporate Emergency Medicine, to alcoholism. You follow Sam through the collapse of his marriage, his road to recovery both physically and spiritually and ultimately his redemption through reconnecting to care giving, his wife and the people around him. It is a compilation of all the experiences most every ER doctor in America encounters during their career.
Whether it’s the rich executive, overly enthusiastic about befriending the physician they credit with saving their life, the carpenter or painter you hire from a patient encounter, the felon with no vision of his future, or the weathered whims of simple stray cat, you will get a chance to experience the real soul of Emergency Medicine through Sam’s life story.
Dave Baehren writes with refreshing imagery, without resorting to cliché medical
metaphors that often flood the works of physician writers. He makes me want to get up in the morning, put on my scrubs and go back to work, to see what beauty a day in the ER has in store for me."
—Louis M. Profeta MD, Author, The Patient in Room Nine Says He’s God

"Dog in the Road is a timely story given the increasing issues of burnout, substance abuse and suicide among medical practitioners. But it is not just a story for physicians. It is a reminder that humans have the capacity to overcome troubles and move forward, but that it will always require self-examination, forgiveness, hard work and most of all, the love of others. And that things may turn out well, but not always as we expect.

It is a reminder that the past is not a sentence, and the future is not always what we expect. And that it can be worse, and ultimately far better, than our failures and tears would lead us to expect."
— Edwin Leap, MD, Author, Cats Don’t Hike

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