"It's hard to pinpoint the exact nature of the originality of these stories because Shelly Herman's imaginative range, vocal texture, and nuance of character defy easy and simple analysis. Would it be fair to say you could mix Poe, Dostoyevsky, Virginia Woolf, Hemingway, Eudora Welty and Salinger into a blender and come up with Shelly Herman? No, it wouldn't be fair, because read just one more story and you'd have to add five more writers to the mix. In the final analysis, if we must analyze, one can say each story will leave you breathless and wanting more. But more of what? There's no telling what you'll get. To put it mildly: stupified with delight, mesmerized with wonder."

-- Jack Grapes, author of METHOD WRITING

"Is it the fact that he is a doctor that allows Sheldon Herman to look so deeply into the guts, the bones, the very heart of life? Or is it his poetic genius that makes him such a dedicated doctor? Shelly Herman's stories are sublime, poetic, raunchy, literary, allusive, mysterious, hilarious, vivid, extreme, sexy, revealing, honest, blunt, sentimental, unsentimental, heartbreaking, candid, jolting, witty, disturbing, beautiful, fearless. Beware sitting down with this book-you'll look up an hour later and wonder where the time went, and wonder where you are. It's impossible to stop at one, or five, or even ten. Each one is more utterly delicious than the last. Pace yourself."

Summary
Sheldon Paul Herman is an MD, oncologist, hematologist living in Los Angeles. His book contains 105 short fiction pieces and poems. This book has only a small number of medical stories. The subject matter is eclectic-loneliness, loss, second chances, philosophical ideas, lost world, fantasy, coming of age, relationships, love affairs, sexual affairs, dark tales, death, Greek mythology, humor, family stories, urban isolation, and wolves. Some settings are an anatomy lab, the South Seas, the Alaskan Tundra, the Medina of Fez, the Scottish Highlands, a prison, a steel mill, a big league baseball park, a nudist colony, a laundromat, Yosemite, big cities in the U.S. and, Europe. This is a work of fiction. Inspiration was drawn from artists like Hopper, LaTour, and Modigliani, from poets like Keats, Coleridge, Arnold, Kipling, Poe, Kerouac, and Bob Dylan, and from writers like Casanova, Kafka, Dostoyevsky, London, and Rod Serling, and from genres like film noir, and pulp noir. The tone of many pieces comes from the author's tragic view of life, which makes the funny stories even funnier.