Good Medicine, Part 2

This book of the acrophilic mid-1970s begins with Dr Herschel Bluestein still suffering an uneven heartbeat and losing faith when the drug he has discovered allays a colleague's coronary disease in secret experiments yet winds up ambiguously when the man dies from other causes. After Bluestein's infant son almost dies, his wife Barbara acquires a lover, and so does he. Cathy and Timothy, the young hippie couple in Part 1, decline with their time in rejection and punishment but transfuse their rebellious attitudes and faith into Herschel, rewarding him very well by the end of the book for refusing to suffer.