An Animal Life: A Chance to Cut (Series Book 2)

BOOK 2 IN THE AWARD-WINNING SERIES Outrunning a broken childhood, Mike London is the vet school's top-dog senior student cruising toward graduation and a coveted internship when a flash of bravado with a blade nearly costs a vital service dog its life. The fatal near miss sends Mike into a tailspin threatening the lives of whales, sea turtles, and first-year students as he wrestles with his boyhood torment and a surgeon hell-bent on seeing him fail. A Chance to Cut is Mike's only chance to heal. In this true-to-life story of heartache and humor, Howard Krum explores "the difference between you and me" through the guiding principle of modern veterinary medicine: all animals (including people) are more alike than different - we all need love to heal that broken part inside.

BOOK 2 IN THE AWARD-WINNING SERIES Outrunning a broken childhood, Mike London is the vet school's top-dog senior student cruising toward graduation and a coveted internship when a flash of bravado with a blade nearly costs a vital service dog its life. The fatal near miss sends Mike into a tailspin threatening the lives of whales, sea turtles, and first-year students as he wrestles with his boyhood torment and a surgeon hell-bent on seeing him fail. A Chance to Cut is Mike's only chance to heal. In this true-to-life story of heartache and humor, Howard Krum explores "the difference between you and me" through the guiding principle of modern veterinary medicine: all animals (including people) are more alike than different - we all need love to heal that broken part inside.

Howard is an aquatic animal veterinarian and science writer. Along with canine anatomy, ruminant physiology and small animal surgery, in veterinary school Howard studied aquatic animals at both the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole and the National Aquarium in Baltimore (NAIB). After graduating from Penn in 1992, a benefactor helped him create a veterinary internship working at NAIB. His good fortune continued when he was hired as the first full-time veterinarian for the New England Aquarium (NEAq) in Boston. At NEAq he worked with nearly every species under the sun -- humpback whales, harbor seals, jellyfish, sea turtles, bluefin tuna, lobster, lumpfish and herring. Subsequently, Howard signed on to help launch both the Georgia Aquarium and the Georgia Sea Turtle Center. He has been featured on the PBS TV series Scientific American Frontiers with Alan Alda and his work with stranded sea turtles, large whales and dolphins has been recognized on the NBC Nightly News, various regional news stations and in dozens of newspaper outlets including the Boston Globe. Also, Howard's contributions to help create the world's largest aquarium were chronicled in the award-winning documentary, "Window To Wow/The Opening of the Georgia Aquarium" (produced by WXIA-TV Atlanta). With a long-standing goal to combine his love for animals, science and creative communication, Howard enrolled in the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University where he studied science writing, creative nonfiction and fiction writing. He graduated in 2002 with a MA. He has published numerous scientific articles and penned chapters including "When Whale Sharks Fly" in: The Rhino With Glue-on Shoes and Other Surprising True Stories of Zoo Vets and Their Patients (Bantam/Dell Publishing Company, Random House Book Group). In fact, Howard loves writing so much, he's been known to compose emails and to-do lists on a daily basis. At present, he lives in Vermont with his wonderfully fabulous wife, Mary Margaret, their sweet dog Mola and a really good kitten, Lucky George.