It may have something to do with my day-job, but in my free time I generally prefer to read fiction. I made an exception recently for Dr. Benjamin Gilmer’s 2022 nonfiction work, The Other Dr. Gilmer: Two Men, A Murder, and an Unlikely Fight for Justice. I’m glad I did. The book is a page-turning memoir and legal thriller chock full of North Carolina people and places (Governor Cooper even has a cameo). It also is an indictment of how American society treats (or leaves untreated) the mentally ill, particularly those who are imprisoned. Dr. Benjamin Gilmer is graduate of Davidson College and East Carolina University’s School of Medicine who began his medical career in 2009 at the Cane Creek Family Health Center, a six-room clinic serving a rural community about 30 minutes southeast of Asheville. Cane Creek had only recently reopened when Benjamin joined its staff, having closed more than three years earlier after its founder, Dr. Vince Gilmer (no relation) was charged with, and ultimately convicted of, first degree murder for killing his ailing father, Dalton Gilmer, and depositing his body on the side of the road near Abington, Virginia. Benjamin Gilmer writes of his passion for rural medicine and his efforts to forge meaningful connections with his patients and the community he served. As he tells it, that passion quickly became intertwined with a consuming curiosity about his predecessor, the other Dr. Gilmer, who was beloved by his former patients. Those patients told Benjamin that Vince had been [...]
Faculty Coordinators
