According to Doctor Hurwitz’s most recent novel
PARK CITY, Utah, Oct. 29, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — Feared for carrying rabies, bats get a bad rap as scary Halloween symbols. The Tale of a Transplanted Heart gives readers an entirely new perspective on bats, as it tells the story of an infamous bat researcher whose character ominously changes after his life is saved by a heart transplant.
The main character in this story studies bats because they appear to possess disease-defying superpowers. Bats are the only mammals capable of surviving the rabies virus, which invariably kills any other unvaccinated mammal it infects. Even when living intimately with millions of their friends, bats almost never succumb to the viruses they harbor. Consequently, viruses love bats. “The only mammals to have mastered flight,” migrating bats can readily transport viruses far and wide. In addition to revealing bats’ superior immune defenses, this novel portrays these most misunderstood animals as intelligent, linguistic, musical, and peaceful.
The Tale of a Transplanted Heart also explores the phenomenon of “cellular memory.” As transplant medicine has grown, increasing numbers of organ recipients are reporting the development of emotions, preferences, and memories that are not their own. When the dedicated scientist in this story starts to exhibit disturbing personality changes following his heart transplant, his physician wife can barely recognize the person her husband has become, and his associates worry that the heart of an angry donor may have turned this gifted scientist into a dangerous bioterrorist.
Beverly Hurwitz’s fifth medical mystery also pulls a curtain back on infectious disease research, whereby scientists can alter the DNA of deadly germs. Research labs can also be involved in vicious competition for funding, investor pressure to produce the next blockbuster vaccine, lab accidents, and the creation of biologic weaponry. This story provokes the questions: did COVID arise spontaneously in nature, or was it a “designer virus” that escaped from a lab? And if so, was its escape accidental?
The Tale of a Transplanted Heart also whips up grievances about the business takeover of American health care. Set in a struggling rural hospital, recently acquired by a for-profit corporation, the bat researcher’s wife and her colleagues become embroiled in conflict with the hospital’s new management. When administrators ignore the rising incidence of mysterious infections, this hospital’s doctors start to fear for their patients’ lives.
This novel will challenge the reader to consider issues that relate to organ donation. Does your “soul” survive when your heart is beating in someone else’s body? Is organ donation a path to immortality? This story also asks: why don’t bats get cancer or diabetes or many other diseases, and what can they teach humans about how to have longer, healthier lives?
The Tale of a Transplanted Heart is available in paperback and Kindle editions with reading samples, along with other books by Beverly Hurwitz M.D., at https://www.amazon.com/s?k=books+by+beverly+hurwitz
Contact:Â Â Â Â Â Â Â
Beverly Hurwitz M.D.,
Author
435.901.2783
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SOURCE Beverly Hurwitz M.D.
