Publication Date: May 13, 2025
A 2023 CLAYMORE AWARD FINALIST
Desperate to rid her husband of the burden of caring for her scleroderma and end-stage kidney failure, Betsy Daniels seeks out help to end her life. But her friend, a cancer survivor, convinces Betsy instead to pray like she’s never prayed before. Several weeks later, the gambit seems to have paid off. Her kidney failure has resolved and even her family doctor, Regina Thomas, can’t find a reason why. Her body is miraculously healing, the scleroderma vanishing as if it never existed. Betsy is convinced she’s been blessed with a miracle and wants the world to know the word of God.
But Regina isn’t convinced they’re witnessing God’s work. She’s a woman of science, and she fears Betsy’s spontaneous remission may have other consequences. Betsy is changing, both outwardly and inwardly. And Regina is suffering from her own medical problems, and if she can find out why Betsy is healing, perhaps she can help herself as well.
What Betsy and Regina don’t know is that a hired killer is also seeking that answer. He’s already murdered a biotech researcher who claimed to have developed a panacea for all disease, but the prototype itself is missing and all the supporting research destroyed. Having tortured and eliminated the researcher’s friends and coworkers, the killer has tracked the prototype to Clearwater, Florida, where Betsy and Regina live. And he will stop at nothing to get it.
He’s not the only one. Before his murder, the researcher reached out to his friend, Swiss Professor Friedrich Gersch, a genius who has tackled some of the biggest biotechnological threats to society, and gave him clues to finding the prototype. Gersch has also traced those clues to Clearwater, and is determined to find the prototype before it falls into the hands of his greatest enemies.
Whoever finds Betsy first will hold the key to the greatest medical discovery in human history-or its greatest threat.
Imagine a drug capable of curing all human illnesses. Then, imagine being the person behind the drug’s discovery.
Author Joel Shulkin, MD, delivers yet another successful medical thriller with Spontaneous Remission. Rather than basking in the limelight for this life-saving medication, a brutal killer targets anyone remotely connected.
As the body count rises, a renowned Swiss biotechnologist receives a cryptic message from the deceased researcher regarding the prototype. It sets off to the United States to find more clues.
Meanwhile, a Florida woman whose body has been ravaged by scleroderma is on the verge of giving up when a close friend advises her to have faith. When Betsy’s health undergoes a massive transformation, she proclaims it a miracle.
The chapters alternate between characters, with each one building the suspense as the storyline is woven together.
Spontaneous Remission delivers a roller coaster ride brimming with cutting-edge discoveries and the fight for control.
Joel Shulkin, MD, is the author of the Memory Thieves and the Death Benefits series. He has also penned award-winning short stories and poetry. A developmental-behavioral pediatrician and United States Air Force veteran with a master’s in public health, Joel lives in Florida with his wife and two daughters.
