Book excerpt: In this gripping book, gifted writer and veteran AIDS doctor Abigail Zuger shows us the face of the AIDS epidemic among the urban poor, in spare, evocative language that makes her patients live before the reader's eyes. There is Eddie, caring for his wife and himself, trying to keep his children out of foster homes. There is elderly Pauline, HIV-positive herself, caring for her grandchildren and watching her daughters die. There is Shannon, whose symptoms are ultimately traced to a surprising source. In a world beset by crime, drugs, and abandonments large and small, AIDS is the latest and bitterest affliction. Doctors and nurses struggle to care for patients in crowded clinics and emergency rooms, far from international biomedical conferences in expensive hotels, from laboratories and journals in which theories are debated, and from glossy state-of-the-art medical centers. The poor live and die, for the most part, in the shadows. This remarkable and memorable book brings them into the light.