The Human Remains: Drawing out Compassion in Medicine by Nathan A. Gray is a stunning graphic medicine memoir that details the arduous path to becoming a palliative care doctor.  The cover drawing of a heart, as well as the title of the book itself, telegraph that this is a story about recentering the emotional core of medicine. The double entendre of the words and the anatomical authenticity of the image also reflect how this author will not mask the truth with a Hallmark version. As an internal medicine and palliative care physician myself and one with doctors in the family who presented one version of life in medicine, I knew Gray’s narrative would resonate with me.

Nothing prepared me for the visceral impact of experiencing this familiar story through the medium of graphic medicine.