"Enthralling. Harrowing. Heartbreaking. And utterly redemptive. Lindsey
Fitzharris hit this one out of the park." —Erik Larson, author of The Splendid
and the Vile
Lindsey Fitzharris, the award-winning author of The Butchering Art, presents
the compelling, true story of a visionary surgeon who rebuilt the faces of the
First World War’s injured heroes, and in the process ushered in the modern era
of plastic surgery.
From the moment the first machine gun rang out over the Western Front, one
thing was clear: mankind’s military technology had wildly surpassed its medical
capabilities. Bodies were battered, gouged, hacked, and gassed. The First World
War claimed millions of lives and left millions more wounded and disfigured. In
the midst of this brutality, however, there were also those who strove to
alleviate suffering. The Facemaker tells the extraordinary story of such an
individual: the pioneering plastic surgeon Harold Gillies, who dedicated
himself to reconstructing the burned and broken faces of the injured soldiers
under his care.
Gillies, a Cambridge-educated New Zealander, became interested in the nascent
field of plastic surgery after encountering the human wreckage on the front.
Returning to Britain, he established one of the world’s first hospitals
dedicated entirely to facial reconstruction. There, Gillies assembled a unique
group of practitioners whose task was to rebuild what had been torn apart, to
re-create what had been destroyed. At a time when losing a limb made a soldier
a hero, but losing a face made him a monster to a society largely intolerant of
disfigurement, Gillies restored not just the faces of the wounded but also
their spirits.
The Facemaker places Gillies’s ingenious surgical innovations alongside the
dramatic stories of soldiers whose lives were wrecked and repaired. The result
is a vivid account of how medicine can be an art, and of what courage and
imagination can accompli…
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