BAYAMET BOOKS RELEASES CATCHING BABIES ON AUDIO!
Audiobook version of first novel that charts the human story behind childbirth in America
Portland, Oregon – December 13, 2021 – Bayamet Books announces the release of the audiobook version of Catching Babies, the breakthrough novel by medical economist and health care writer J.D. Kleinke.
Catching Babies is an ensemble drama that charts the professional and personal struggles of a group of OB/GYNs as they complete their residency in a busy urban teaching hospital, embark on ambitious careers and try to mend personal relationships neglected through years of training and sacrifice.
Lisa Saunders, MD, author of the “Diagnosis” column for the New York Times Magazine, described Catching Babies as “an inside look at the industry that brings our babies into this world. It’s a harsh world for doctors who work to make sure that every baby has a soft landing. Insightful. Gripping. Wonderful.”
The audiobook for Catching Babies is read by Kathleen Li, a veteran of more than 40 titles. Audio Obsession calls Ms. Li “a wonderful narrator and voice performer” and notes her ability to bring “characters to life…projecting the emotions of the characters and the drama of the story into her performance.”
“Kathleen Li brings the perfect combination of precision, toughness, and empathy we wanted for these most difficult of medical stories,” said Sara Radcliffe of Bayamet Books. “We wanted someone who sounds like a teaching physician in a tough urban hospital, and that’s exactly the feel she bring to this recording. She sounds like the smart, seasoned, compassionate OB/GYN you would want if you or a loved one were dealing with a tough pregnancy or serious women’s health challenge.”
“The world J.D. Kleinke introduces us to is full of dynamic characters, high stakes situations, and fascinating medical intrigue. It blurs the line between insider exposé, and colorful human drama. A great read,” said Reid Scott, President of Silvercloud Pictures.
Mr. Scott is one of several producers bringing Catching Babies to television, which is currently in development with Johnny Galecki, ABC, and Warner Bros. Television.
“There is strong and growing interest in the difficult themes explored in Catching Babies,” said Sara Radcliffe, Publisher of Bayamet Books, “because the author has created a rare, intimate window into a dramatic, high-stakes culture that will always be with us, the culture that has brought all of us into the world.”
“For years we economists and policy wonks talked about focusing the health care debate on individuals—on patients, but we continued to cite data, analyses and statistics,” remarked Kleinke. “Fiction gives us the opportunity to tell the real story of health care with all the nuance and complexity of the human condition, to give voice not only to the problems inherent in the system, but to the people who must suffer the consequences of those failures.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
J.D. Kleinke is a medical economist, health care policy expert, and advocate for patient access to medical care. He has helped create four health care information organizations, served as a health care business columnist for the Wall Street Journal, and advised both sides of the political aisle on health policy and legislation. Kleinke’s work has appeared in JAMA, Barron’s, the British Medical Journal, Modern Healthcare, and numerous other publications. His first book, Bleeding Edge: The Business of Health Care in the New Century (Aspen, 1998) was a foundational textbook for many physician-executive MBA programs and health administration graduate programs in the U.S. His follow-up, Oxymorons: The Myth of a US Health Care System (Wiley, 2001), was a scathing and oft-cited criticism of what is wrong with the health insurance industry, and one of the earliest calls for systemic health care reform.
ABOUT BAYAMET BOOKS
Bayamet Books is a independent publisher based in Portland, Oregon, founded in 2016 by its Publisher and Editor, Sara Radcliffe. Catching Babies was originally published in 2011 by Fourth Chapter Books of Portland, Oregon.
For interviews with the author or more information about Catching Babies, visit www.bayametbooks.com.
Practical information
Publisher: Bayamet Books, Portland, OR
New Publication Date: December 2020
Original Pub Date, March 2011 by Fourth Chapter Books
ISBN:978-05787985-9-2
Pages: 336
Price: $15.95
J.D. Kleinke’s novel CATCHING BABIES in Development with Johnny Galecki, ABC, and Warner Bros. Television
Portland, Oregon – December 10, 2021 – Bayamet Books is pleased to announce that Johnny Galecki and ABC are moving forward with the development of Catching Babies, the breakthrough 2011 novel by medical economist and health care writer J.D. Kleinke. Catching Babies is an ensemble drama that charts the professional and personal struggles of a group of OB/GYNs as they complete their residency in a busy urban teaching hospital, embark on ambitious careers and try to mend personal relationships neglected through years of training and sacrifice.
Executive producers for the show include Galecki, Reid Scott, Elspeth Keller, and Michael Baum. Writers are Manifest co-executive producers Margaret Easley and Laura Putney. Cory Wood of Alcide Bava Productions will co-executive produce. The studio is Warner Bros. Television.
While still a novel in intimacy and tone, Kleinke’s intricate knowledge of the health care system turned Catching Babies into an exploration of the broader landscape surrounding obstetrics and women’s health: the culture clash of religion, reproductive rights, and medical technology; the emotional brutality of residency training; the politics and bureaucracy that drive today’s academic medical centers; the struggles of disenfranchised women trapped inside a broken health care system; and the triumphs of many women getting and staying pregnant against the medical and technical odds, and America’s ongoing civil war over abortion rights.
Lisa Saunders, MD, author of the “Diagnosis” column for the New York Times Magazine, described Catching Babies as “an inside look at the industry that brings our babies into this world. It’s a harsh world for doctors who work to make sure that every baby has a soft landing. Insightful. Gripping. Wonderful.”
“The world J.D. Kleinke introduces us to is full of dynamic characters, high stakes situations, and fascinating medical intrigue. It blurs the line between insider exposé, and colorful human drama. A great read,” said Reid Scott, an Executive Producer on the show.
“There is strong and growing interest in the difficult themes explored in Catching Babies,” said Sara Radcliffe, Publisher of Bayamet Books, “because the author has created a rare, intimate window into a dramatic, high-stakes culture that will always be with us, the culture that has brought all of us into the world.”
“For years we economists and policy wonks talked about focusing the health care debate on individuals—on patients, but we continued to cite data, analyses and statistics,” remarked Kleinke. “Fiction gives us the opportunity to tell the real story of health care with all the nuance and complexity of the human condition, to give voice not only to the problems inherent in the system, but to the people who must suffer the consequences of those failures.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
J.D. Kleinke is a medical economist, health care policy expert, and advocate for patient access to medical care. He has helped create four health care information organizations, served as a health care business columnist for the Wall Street Journal, and advised both sides of the political aisle on health policy and legislation. Kleinke’s work has appeared in JAMA, Barron’s, the British Medical Journal, Modern Healthcare, and numerous other publications. His first book, Bleeding Edge: The Business of Health Care in the New Century (Aspen, 1998) was a foundational textbook for many physician-executive MBA programs and health administration graduate programs in the U.S. His follow-up, Oxymorons: The Myth of a US Health Care System (Wiley, 2001), was a scathing and oft-cited criticism of what is wrong with the health insurance industry, and one of the earliest calls for systemic health care reform.
ABOUT BAYAMET BOOKS
Bayamet Books is a independent publisher based in Portland, Oregon, founded in 2016 by its Publisher and Editor, Sara Radcliffe. Catching Babies was originally published in 2011 by Fourth Chapter Books of Portland, Oregon.
For interviews with the author or more information about Catching Babies, visit www.bayametbooks.com.
Practical information
Publisher: Bayamet Books, Portland, OR
New Publication Date: December 2020
Original Pub Date, March 2011 by Fourth Chapter Books
ISBN:978-05787985-9-2
Pages: 336
Price: $15.95
BAYAMET BOOKS RELEASES THAT GOLDEN SHORE
Sequel to J.D. Kleinke’s Dudeville is Bittersweet Exploration of the California Dream
Portland, Oregon — March 23, 2021 — Bayamet Books announces the release of That Golden Shore, the sequel to J.D. Kleinke’s 2017 novel, Dudeville.
That Golden Shore is a bittersweet love letter to a California in slow-motion apocalypse, a tragi-comic caravan of aging rock stars and yoga gurus, surf punks and besieged immigrants, washouts from Hollywood, Silicon Valley, and the professional surf tour. It charts the odd collisions of history, culture, and spirituality that have seduced people to “the Golden State” for centuries: its lore and landscapes; its fragile, vanishing, impossible beauty; the mad frustrations of trying to live in a place collapsing under the weight of its own mythology.
In That Golden Shore, a working musician holed up in an off-the-grid beach town falling into the ocean gives us a stage-eye view of the tribal power of music, the healing power of surfing, and the enduring, redemptive power of landscape.
Kirkus Reviews calls That Golden Shore “an enthusiastic, profound coming-of-age tale for an older generation.”
“While the novel explores the enduring themes of American rootlessness and re-invention, and the conflict between self discovery and middle age reckoning, it is also timely and relevant, as the narrator grapples with his love of a place on fire, a geography on the front lines of climate catastrophe,” said Sara Radcliffe, Publisher of Bayamet Books. “J.D. was writing the book the very same year California was experiencing its first ever net out-migration.”
That Golden Shore is the sequel to J.D. Kleinke’s Dudeville, a coming-of middle-age adventure story about a late-30s corporate dropout turned backcountry snowboarder and mountaineer. Kirkus Reviews called Dudeville “a vibrant, creative, youthful yarn about personal freedom and self-discovery played out against an American West backdrop.” That Golden Shore picks up the story when the narrator of Dudeville reaches the literal and metaphoric end of the road, after fifteen years of very good and very bad luck in the American West.
“California itself is a major character of the story,” Kleinke says about the structure of That Golden Shore. “It is a conflicted, complicated, highly mythologized beast, and the real protagonist for the mid-life reckoning of my narrator and his odd assortment of bandmates, lovers and friends. No place denuded its landscapes faster in the mad quest for money; or slaughtered its indigenous people with the same speed or fury or viciousness.
“No place in the world has drawn so many foreign cultures to one place,” Kleinke continues, “not to cohabit in adjacent ghettos, but to collide into a socio-economic free-for-all, a cultural battle royale, to mix and mutate into a wholly new culture that would in turn impose its fantasies about itself on the rest of the world. The California Dream, from the Gold Rush to Hollywood to Silicon Valley, has always been a fairy tale, with a great soundtrack of road trip songs playing on radios around the world for half a century. And for the duration of its slow-motion apocalypse, its self-absorbed masses will keep spinning that fairytale, for themselves and the rest of the world, because they have to believe that it is only one more freeway exit, or one more pitch meeting, or one more spiritual awakening away.
“In That Golden Shore, I wanted to capture the madness of all of that, of the desperate, manic musicality of California in one sprawling story about a place I have come to love, and hate, and love. It’s a literary working-through of an intense personal conflict, of running around California’s mountains, and surfing its waves, and sleeping every night next to the amniotic pull of its ocean, with your eyes and your heart wide open. I wanted to state for the record the mad frustrations of trying to live in a place collapsing under the weight of its own mythology, and see what might happen – what it would feel like – to puncture that dream, reach through it and see what it might feel like when the road reaches its end, on the cliffs looking out over the Pacific Ocean, and catches on fire.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kleinke wrote That Golden Shore while living, surfing, teaching yoga, and playing music in Half Moon Bay and Encinitas, California. He currently lives with his wife in Portland, Oregon. Kleinke is also the author of Catching Babies, a medical novel currently in development as a television series by Warner Brothers. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Freeskier, Surfers Journal, and other publications.
ABOUT BAYAMET BOOKS
Bayamet Books is an independent publisher based in Portland, Oregon, founded in 2016 by its Publisher and Editor, Sara Radcliffe.
For interviews with the author or more information about That Golden Shore, visit www.bayametbooks.com.
Practical information
Publisher: Bayamet Books, Portland, OR
Publication Date: March 2021
ISBN: 978-0-578-75439-0
Pages: 330
Price: $15.95
BAYAMET BOOKS RE-RELEASES CATCHING BABIES!
Medical economist and health care writer publishes first novel that charts the human story behind childbirth in America
Portland, Oregon — December 8, 2020 — Bayamet Books announces the re-release of Catching Babies, the breakthrough 2011 novel by medical economist and health care writer J.D. Kleinke. Catching Babies is an ensemble drama that charts the professional and personal struggles of a group of OB/GYNs as they complete their residency in a busy urban teaching hospital, embark on ambitious careers and try to mend personal relationships neglected through years of training and sacrifice.
Catching Babies was originally published by Fourth Chapter Books of Portland, Oregon, in 2011. Bayamet Books is re-publishing the novel in the wake of its recent selection for development as a television series by Warner Brothers, in partnership with Silvercloud Pictures of Los Angeles. Silvercloud Pictures has held the option for TV/movie rights to Catching Babies for several years.
“I was immediately drawn to Catching Babies because it captured the emotion and drama we face when we become patients,” said its original publisher Victoria Blake, publisher of Fourth Chapter Books. “The novel is rich with medical detail and could easily be an exposé, but Kleinke elegantly uses the novel format to explain things that non-fiction can’t. Medicine is really a matter of the heart.”
Lisa Saunders, MD, author of the “Diagnosis” column for the New York Times Magazine, described Catching Babies as “an inside look at the industry that brings our babies into this world. It’s a harsh world for doctors who work to make sure that every baby has a soft landing. Insightful. Gripping. Wonderful.”
“The world JD Kleinke introduces us to is full of dynamic characters, high stakes situations, and fascinating medical intrigue. It blurs the line between insider exposé, and colorful human drama. A great read,” said Reid Scott, President of Silvercloud Pictures.
“There is strong and growing interest in Catching Babies,” said Sara Radcliffe, Publisher of Bayamet Books, “because the author has created a rare, intimate window into a dramatic, high-stakes culture that will always be with us, the culture that has brought all of us into the world.”
While still a novel in intimacy and tone, Kleinke’s intricate knowledge of the health care system allows Catching Babies to explore the broader landscape surrounding obstetrics and women’s health, including: the culture clash of religion, reproductive rights, and medical technology; the emotional brutality of residency training; the politics and bureaucracy that drive today’s academic medical centers; the struggles of disenfranchised women trapped inside a broken health care system; and the triumphs of many women getting and staying pregnant against the medical and technical odds, and America’s ongoing civil war over abortion rights.
“For years we economists and policy wonks talked about focusing the health care debate on individuals — on patients, but we continued to cite data, analyses and statistics,” remarked Kleinke. “Fiction gives us the opportunity to tell the real story of health care with all the nuance and complexity of the human condition, to give voice not only to the problems inherent in the system, but to the people who must suffer the consequences of those failures.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
J.D. Kleinke is a medical economist, health care policy expert, and advocate for patient access to medical care. He has helped create four health care information organizations, served as a health care business columnist for the Wall Street Journal, and advised both sides of the political aisle on health policy and legislation. His work has appeared in The New York Times, JAMA, Barron’s, the British Medical Journal, Modern Healthcare, and numerous other publications.
Kleinke is the author of two other novels, Dudeville and its sequel That Golden Shore. He wrote Catching Babies while living in Evergreen, Colorado, and Portland, Oregon.
ABOUT BAYAMET BOOKS
Bayamet Books is an independent publisher based in Portland, Oregon, founded in 2016 by its Publisher and Editor, Sara Radcliffe.
For interviews with the author or more information about Catching Babies, visit www.bayametbooks.com.
Publisher: Bayamet Books, Portland, OR
New Publication Date: December 2020
Original Publication Date, March 2011 by Fourth Chapter Books
ISBN: 978-0-578-79859-2
Pages: 336
Price: $15.95