The Serpent and the Staff — Frank Yerby

On the early nineteen-hundreds, Duncan Childers pried his way out of the New Orleans slums to become one of the foremost surgeons of his time. At thirty-three MD Duncan Childers had achieved his goal--good clothes, a luxurious home, costly instruments paid for by his rich, sensual and decadent wife, and a nationwide reputation as a surgeon, he was invited to the prestigious salons of Vienna.

But the price had been high--the bitter-sweetness of the girl called Calico, the torment of Marta, his Viennese beauty, and the final cruelty of breaking Jenny's heart, the one girl he could have loved truly. Duncan determined to reject everything he had worked for and go back to the roaring hell of the swamp-ridden parish where he began...

But everything was against him -- the accident of his birth, his rich, decadent wife, the town bully who despised him for his success and taunted his past. But Duncan Childers was not to be denied. He will have to face -- the terror of a yellow-fever epidemic… the tense moments of a heart operation… the fury of a lynch mob… the horror of a trumped-up murder trial...