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The Facemaker

A Visionary Surgeon's Battle to Mend the Disfigured Soldiers of World War I

Audiobook (Includes supplementary content)
2 of 2 copies available
2 of 2 copies available

"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. The audiobook is read by actor Daniel Gillies who is the great, great nephew of the pioneering surgeon, Harold Gillies.

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 accomplish in the presence of relentless horror.
A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

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    • AudioFile Magazine
      Daniel Gillies sounds weary at times as he narrates accounts of WWI battles--much as the soldiers who fought the battles might have. Listeners will come to feel that the new war technology of the time only brought new ways to disfigure faces. That's natural for an audiobook about the man who found new ways to put those faces back together. Dr. Harold Gillies also saw the need for hubs in which to perform this restorative plastic surgery. Gillies's British accent describes the facial injuries with understated delicacy, capturing the care put into journalistic accounts during the war. That delicacy also enhances the lighter anecdotes, such as the one about Gillies's encounter with a ballerina with a scissors wound. Listeners may tire of the descriptions of Gillies's techniques, but they're intended to show the horrors of war. J.A.S. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from May 9, 2022
      Medical historian Fitzharris (The Butchering Art) paints a fascinating portrait of pioneering plastic surgeon Harold Gillies and the soldiers whose faces he rebuilt during WWI. Drawing on firsthand accounts of trench warfare, Fitzharris shows how “Europe’s military technology had wildly surpassed its medical capabilities,” with facial wounds caused by shrapnel, burns, and infections far more common than in earlier conflicts. Gillies, a Cambridge-educated New Zealander, first supervised a unit dedicated to face and jaw wounds at the Cambridge Military Hospital, where he developed new techniques for skin grafts and rebuilding noses and eyelids, then established Queen’s Hospital in Sidcup, England—the first hospital devoted to facial reconstruction. Fitzharris spotlights some of Gillies’s collaborators, including French American dentist Auguste Charles Valadier, who early in the war converted his Rolls Royce into a mobile operating room, and artist Henry Tonks, a trained doctor who created pictorial records of patients before, during, and after their operations. She also details the hard-won physical and psychological recoveries of patients like Pvt. Percy Clare, who was mistakenly sent to the wrong hospital before undergoing several operations at Queen’s Hospital. Meticulously researched and compulsively readable, this exceptional history showcases how compassion and innovation can help mitigate the terrible wounds of war.

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  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

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  • English

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