Ross Pennie may be an infectious disease specialist and a professor at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ont., but writing is his passion.
“I see there are two parts of myself,” said Pennie. “The doctoring part and the writing part. I say doctoring is my vocation and writing is my passion.”
At the young age of 25, Pennie went to Papua New Guinea as a medical volunteer and came back to Ontario a changed man.
“For the next 25 years, the stories were in my head. And they finally came out,” he explained. “I felt compelled to write them, so I wrote a book called The Unforgiving Tides.”
A collection of 16 linked stories, this insightful book is a creative memoir of Pennie’s experiences practising medicine in Papua New Guinea.
Writing, it seems, was an itch that Pennie hasn’t stopped scratching ever since. Realizing that his life “wasn’t so interesting after Papua New Guinea,” he turned to his imagination to feed his passion for stories.
Drawing on his deep fountain of medical knowledge for inspiration, Ross now writes intriguing medical mysteries, his most recent book being Tainted: A Dr. Zol Szabo Medical Mystery.
“You write about what you know. I am an infection specialist, so I decided that I would write medical mysteries.”
Years after returning to Canada, Ross’ “ordinary Ontario life” became – and remains (as his face lights up) – a literary life.
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