{"product_id":"pandemonium-logs-sioux-falls-south-dakota-2020-2022-9781978835276","title":"Pandemonium Logs: Sioux Falls, South Dakota, 2020-2022","description":"\u003cp\u003e In 2015, Ben Miller and the poet Anne Pierson Wiese moved from New York City to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, to explore their midwestern roots and to focus on their writing careers. Working a day job in a hospital, Miller had a front-row seat to the COVID-19 pandemic as it moved from the coasts to the urban Midwest. \u003ci\u003ePandemonium Logs\u003c\/i\u003e casts an unflinching eye on the state of the worker in the US health-care system during a global pandemic, giving voice to the doctors, nurses, support staff, patients, and families caught in the complex swirl of daily dilemmas and crucial choices. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e In unsparing yet sympathetic prose, Ben Miller creates an intimate portrait of the impact of COVID on the diverse people of South Dakota. Through a wide range of characters--from understandably confused patients to quietly competent nurses--he explores the human complexities of the crisis: a doctor based in Mumbai who treats critically ill patients in the Dakotas via a tenuous hodgepodge of telehealth apparatus, a Hydra of six workplace trainers who together cannot train one employee to do one job, a vice president of corporate hospitality who lives to rip down safety signs as fast as nurses post them, a ninety-year-old hospital volunteer who pushes wheelchairs containing patients half his age. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e In \u003ci\u003ePandemonium Logs\u003c\/i\u003e, Miller provides precise and moving observations of ordinary people doing extraordinary things. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eBEN MILLER\u003c\/b\u003e is the author of \u003ci\u003eRiver Bend Chronicle: The Junkification of a Boyhood Idyll amid the Curious Glory of Urban Iowa\u003c\/i\u003e. He has published in \u003ci\u003eRaritan\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eSalmagundi\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eOne Story\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eThe Georgia Review\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eThe Southern Review\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eNew England Review, \u003c\/i\u003e and other journals. His essays have been reprinted or noted nine times in \u003ci\u003eBest American Essays\u003c\/i\u003e. His awards include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Radcliffe Institute, as well as grants from the South Dakota Arts Council and the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America. He has been a finalist for the PEN\/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction.\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Rutgers University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50900275626258,"sku":"9781978835276","price":19.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_269b71be-0193-4ed9-bae8-93d9c3ee0220.jpg?v=1738378076","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/pandemonium-logs-sioux-falls-south-dakota-2020-2022-9781978835276","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}