Family physician Gilmer's gripping debut starts out as a murder tale, morphs into a medical mystery, and lands as a heartbreaking account of how poorly the American prison system treats the mentally ill. When the author joined a rural North Carolina clinic, he became fascinated with the clinic's founder, Vince Gilmer--no relation--who was in prison for murdering his mentally ill father in 2004. At first, after hearing an unfounded rumor that the other Gilmer was being released, he was fearful the man would come after him for taking his practice, but he soon set out to reconcile the murderer with the person the clinic's patients revered. Working with a radio journalist, the author discovered Gilmer had a number of medical problems, including antidepressant withdrawal and head trauma from a car accident, that could have made him violent enough to kill his father. In the process, the two Gilmers became friends, and after the radio journalist aired a story about the other Gilmer languishing in prison with various neurological disorders, the author fought to have him released on a clemency plea while becoming an advocate for prison reform for the mentally ill. (The other Gilmer remains in prison.) The author does a fine job humanizing everyone involved. This painful look at a terrible social injustice deserves a wide audience. Agent: Lara Love Hardin, Idea Architects. (Mar.)

Two family doctors, unrelated in spite of having the same last name, establish medical practices in the same North Carolina rural community. In 2004, an increasingly impulsive Dr. Vince Gilmer strangles his mentally ill 60-year-old father and cuts off all his fingers. He's sentenced to life in prison without parole. Years later, Benjamin Gilmer is hired to work in the same clinic Vince did. This weird intersection of their lives generates consternation and challenges for Benjamin, but also compassion. After visiting Vince in prison, Benjamin embarks on a quest to elucidate Vince's motive for patricide and possibly procure justice for him. Is Vince a troubled soul who did a terrible deed? Or a calculating manipulator? Did discontinuing his SSRI medication trigger violent behavior? Might he have an undiagnosed genetic illness that explains his moral and physical decline? Antitheses abound--mercy versus punishment, intuition versus preconceptions, coincidence versus destiny--in this unsettling combination of murder mystery, medical detective tale, and plea for criminal-justice reform. With more than one-third of prison inmates suffering from severe mental illness, greater awareness and better treatment would reduce that number.

When family physician Gilmer joined a rural North Carolina clinic, he was shocked to discover that his predecessor--who coincidentally had the same last name--got up one morning and strangled his father before coming to work. Visiting the "other Dr. Gilmer" in prison, the author immediately recognized a case of untreated mental illness (he was ultimately diagnosed with Huntington's disease), launching often frustrated efforts to secure his colleague the help he needed. Gilmer here expands his story to discuss the high incidence of mental illness in the U.S. prison population and to argue for better treatment--healing rather than punishment.