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House Calls in the Desert

Name: House Calls in the Desert
Price: 10.99 USD
Availability: InStock
Rating: 5 (2 reviews)
Author: Dr. Ray Castell

by Dr. Ray Castell · published via Smithbook

A Tucson family doctor remembers the patients, drives and kitchen tables that taught him what medicine is for.

★★★★★ 5 · 2 reviews 46 readers English

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★★★★★

"My mother was a nurse in Nogales. I sent her a copy the same day."

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What it covers

medical memoirArizonafamily doctorrural medicine

About this book

Early in his career, Dr. Ray Castell made house calls to ranches and small towns south of Tucson, driving a pickup with a black bag and a cooler of vaccines. This memoir gathers the stories he still tells his students: the rancher who paid in firewood, the midnight delivery by headlight, the grandmother who taught him more about listening than any professor. Warm, honest and sometimes funny, it is a book about what happens when a doctor sits down at your kitchen table.

Look inside · First chapter

My first year out of residency, I worked for an old doctor in Tucson who still made house calls to the ranches south of town. He was sixty-eight, he drove a green Ford with no air conditioning, and he handed me the keys the week I arrived. “You drive,” he said. “I’ll sleep. You’ll learn the roads.” Our patients paid in whatever they had. Cash when there was cash. Eggs. A side of beef once, which did not fit in the truck. One rancher near Arivaca paid for three years of visits in mesquite firewoo

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Product details

Title: House Calls in the Desert
Author: Dr. Ray Castell
Format: Digital · browser reader
Language: English
Category: Biography & Memoir · Health & Wellness
Delivery: In seconds · to your e-mail
Access: Lifetime · any device
Publisher: Independent · via Smithbook

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Reviews

5

★★★★★

2 reviews

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1★0

★★★★★ · cat•••@readers.staging.smithbook.test9/30/2026

Read it in an afternoon

My mother was a nurse in Nogales. I sent her a copy the same day.

★★★★★ · bil•••@readers.staging.smithbook.test9/30/2026

Made me want a doctor like him

Every story feels true and none of them feel like bragging. The firewood chapter is perfect.

About the author

Dr. Ray Castell

I have been a family physician in Tucson for thirty-two years, long enough to have delivered babies whose babies I now see for ear infections. For most of that time I have had about fifteen minutes per patient, and I have spent a lot of them wishing I could hand people a short, honest book to read in the car. So I wrote a few. They will not cure anything. They will help you ask better questions, notice the right things and walk out of the exam room knowing what happens next. I live on the east side with my wife, Carmen, two rescue dogs and a saguaro that has been growing its first arm since 2009. Nothing in my books replaces a visit with your own doctor. Please go.

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