What It Takes to Save a Life: A Veterinarian's Quest for Healing and Hope

From Dr. Kwane Stewart, CNN's Hero of the Year for 2023.

Mountains Beyond Mountains meets Tattoos On the Heart in this unforgettable, powerful, and stunningly-told memoir of a struggling veterinarian saving animals and humans on the streets of California - and how he discovered what bonds all living creatures.

Dr. Kwane Stewart was questioning his career as a veterinarian when he saw a homeless man with a flea-infested dog outside of a convenience store. In a moment of spontaneous generosity, he offered to examine the dog and treat him for free. It was the first step in a now nine-year journey that has taken Dr. Kwane from Skid Row to San Francisco and beyond to care for pets and their humans who are living on the streets, a journey that would redefine the powerful human-animal bond.

In What It Takes to Save a Life, Dr. Kwane shows how our four-legged, feathered, scaled, and swimming family members―these dogs, cats, birds, reptiles, and other animals that live side by side with us―provide more than companionship. They offer essential love, hope, and a sense of security.

Written with striking honesty and rich detail, Dr. Kwane looks back on his childhood, how he discovered his appreciation for animals and his calling, and offers a frank assessment of the mental health crisis in veterinary medicine today, where compassion fatigue, burnout, and suicide are facts of life. Full of warm and inspiring stories of human-animal relationships, this powerful and eye-opening book is a reminder that we are all members of a wider family. It is also a clarion call for each of us to help those in need―especially our most vulnerable brothers and sisters―and the animals who are their families. Wise and warm, Dr. Stewart's uplifting nonfiction story is a reminder that one life can make an immeasurable difference.

This unforgettable veterinarian memoir is a testament to second chances―for animals and people alike.

• The Street Vet: Follow Dr. Kwane from Skid Row to San Francisco as he provides critical, free care to the pets of the unhoused, discovering hope on the streets of California.
• Compassion Fatigue: An unflinching look at the burnout, depression, and mental health challenges facing the veterinary community, told from a place of raw honesty and experience.
• Inspirational Memoir: The moving, true story of how a man on the brink of leaving his profession found his true calling by helping the most vulnerable animals and their humans.
• Second Chances: A powerful reminder that it's never too late to find a new purpose, and that saving an animal can sometimes be the first step to saving yourself.