A New York Times Bestseller
Finalist for the 2022 Kirkus Prize Named a best book of the year by
The Guardian
"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: humankind'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 accomplish in the presence of
relentless horror.
