Book Review-The Organ Broker-Stu Strumwasser

What an interesting book and so well written. It flows calmly through rough waters just telling things like they are in Jack's life. His childhood was horrible--he didn't like his chosen occupation as a lawyer. That's when it all started--he had to become a drug seller to pay his way through college. It describes how, as a broker of human organs, mostly livers or kidneys, he truly feels like he is doing some good. He is never totally comfortable and that feeling becomes worse and worse until he meets his supposed son from the only woman he has ever loved. Then he meets a young boy--one of the foreign donors--things start to change for Jack. He is beginning to really question if he truly is helping people. Then his son comes to him and it turns out his son's lover needs a heart--now Jack is not a murderer and that is what it would take. What Jack ultimately does will take your breathe way.

Although this is a novel I am sure there is a black market for organ transplants. In the afterward of the book the author explains what is truly still happening and possible ways it can be stopped. I think everyone should read this book--it is certainly an eye opener!

About the Book: (from Amazon)

The Organ Broker is the thrilling story of an underground black market organ dealer known as “New York Jack.” For eighteen years Jack has been a “transplant tourism director,” sending wealthy Americans and Europeans in need of kidneys and other organs to third world countries where they would buy them from transplant centers on the take. The death of a client and a newfound relationship lead to a crisis of conscience as he is forced to choose between a two million dollar commission—and participating in a murder. Jack races to South Africa, Brazil, and beyond, just one step ahead of his adversary and the FBI, in search of one small act of redemption.

As a disaffected youth in the late eighties, Jack Trayner entered the criminal world, selling coke when he needed money to pay his way through college. Although he later graduated from law school, an opportunity to earn easy money eventually seduced him into the bizarre and illegal black market for organs—a business that some consider horrendous and a small number of others deem to be heroic. The dual nature of this business assuaged Jack’s guilt and allowed him to flourish, yet the death of a client makes what he is doing all too real. The Organ Broker represents Jack’s confession.

The international black market sale of organs is very real and operates at this very moment behind closed hospital doors in many cities all around the world. It is a world that most people are only vaguely aware exists, and few of us know much, if anything, about, until now—in the pages of the confession of New York Jack.

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About the Author: (from Goodreads)

Stu Strumwasser studied creative writing at Cornell University and went on to pursue dual careers on Wall Street and as a musician. Stu was the founder, drummer and primary songwriter in the well-regarded indie rock band Channeling Owen in the 1990s (see picture and songs below). He also continually honed his craft as a writer of socially-relevant fiction.

In 2006 Stu left Wall Street and founded Snow Beverages to make natural soda. While at Snow he raised $3.5 million in angel financing and served as the company’s CEO for six years, personally selling in the product line to leading regional and national chains. A passionate entrepreneur, Stu then co-founded Tengrade in 2011. www.tengrade.com is the social rating tool for the internet, mobile devices and social networks, providing users with “Real Ratings” from their friends and people like them, on anything.

Stu was born in Queens, raised in Lynbrook, and now resides in Brooklyn, New York with his two school-age, identical twin sons. The Organ Broker is his first published novel.

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