As the American born daughter of immigrants, Dr. Sunita Puri knew from a young age that the gulf between her parents' experiences and her own was impossible to bridge, save for two elements: medicine and spirituality.
And it was that tension that eventually drew Puri, a passionate but unsatisfied medical student, to palliative medicine: a new specialty attempting to translate the border between medical intervention and quality-of-life care.
Puri's new book, "That Good Night," is a meditation on impermanence and the role of medicine in helping us to live and die well. Sunita Puri is an assistant professor of clinical medicine at the University of Southern California, and medical director of palliative medicine at the Keck Hospital and Norris Cancer Center.