Doctor Galen

Requiem for the Bone Man depicts the events in the life of Robert Galen, the son of working-class immigrant parents who grows up to pursue his life’s work and dream - the practice of medicine. After a series of tragedies and challenges, in which his faith and dedication are severely tested, he finds himself on the brink of despair. It is then that Galen is reunited with a close friend from his youth, and in the process discovers a renewed reason for hope and even optimism.

The Legend of Safehaven is a sequel to R. A. Comunale’s highly praised first novel, Requiem for the Bone Man. It follows the life of Dr. Robert Galen and his friends, Robert and Nancy Edison, as they live in semi-retirement on a mountaintop in Pennsylvania, raising and caring for the three orphaned Cuban children they had rescued and adopted. Along the way, the six residents of the mountain interact with a variety of individuals – human and animal – who also have found a home on the property that becomes known as Safehaven.

It started with a dead lady.... That chance discovery, on a dingy river bank in New Jersey, changed the life of 8-year-old Robert Galen forever. It propelled him into a lifelong study of medicine, beginning under the sage counsel of his mentor, Dr. Agnelli. In turn, his medical career led him to two ill-fated marriages and one would-be recaptured romance. Then, alone and in near despair, Galen found a new reason for being, in his old friend Bob Edison, along with his patient wife, Nancy, and in the three, orphaned Hidalgo children.

In Dr. Galen’s Little Black Bag, we follow the man that Berto Galen has become, as he deals with the pleasures, traumas, and tragedies of life in the medical profession. Like Berto’s World, it is a collection of stories, but together those stories create a portrait of someone who is deeply dedicated to healing - even as he struggles to heal the hurts and wounds that he has suffered over his own lifetime. And like the preceding collection, Dr. Galen’s Little Black Bag presents basic human truths, dressed of necessity in the cloak of fiction