The Vet at Noah's Ark: Stories of Survival from an Inner-city Animal Hospital, by Doug Mader (Apollo Publishers, $24.99, 2022, 371pp)
A big book that reads fast, with chapters titled month by month and with the names of their major characters so you can guess or remember.
This may just be the Book of the Year! Except this year is 2025 and The Vet was published in 2022.
Veterinarian Doug Mader is someone I would love to know, work with and learn from. The Vet at Noah's Ark (the name of his practice) is located in a less than safe location of a major city, Los Angeles, and author Mader writes about his first year in his own practice, from the viewpoint of years later. Part of this early year is the Rodney King verdict so we live through the aftermath of the rioting that took place mere blocks from the vet clinic.
Mader is someone who embodies the human-animal bond, like a big brother, and though he is one of the few exotic animals vets in California, he writes less about those animals (and a few good dogs and cats thrown in) than about their humans and how all the humans relate to each other - from his staff to the vet students who rotate in each month (some make it, some don't), to the devoted humans who live with snakes or lizards. And the students plus a staffer live in the upstairs apartments!
Mader has high moral standards and wrestles with discounting his knowledge (his prices) for those clients who can't pay the full amount. And we meet the resident hooker and her kitten, John. After all, every hooker needs a John.
To interject a little humor we have the good vet being picked up in a sushi restaurant by a striking blonde. I bet you will read that couple of pages more than once!






