Hello Friends and Readers

My work on The Organ Thieves: The Shocking Story of the First Heart Transplant in the Segregated South started several years ago after I read about the work of two medical pioneers in kidney and heart transplantation, David Hume and Richard Lower. These legendary surgeons once practiced medicine in the city where I’ve worked as a newspaper reporter, magazine editor, and in other communication posts: Richmond, Virginia.

What people are saying about
​the Organ Thieves

“This powerful book weaves together a medical mystery, a legal drama, and a sweeping history, its characters confronting unprecedented issues of life and death under the shadows of centuries of racial injustice.  Jones evokes each person and each scene with remarkable skill and compassion, recreating an America of the 1960s and 1970s that speaks directly to the dilemmas of the twenty-first century.” 
—Edward L. Ayers, Historian and Winner of the Bancroft and Lincoln Prizes
“Jones meticulously details how yet another significant achievement in America was disproportionately costly for black people. The Organ Thieves exhumes more than just bodies–it unearths human hopes, scientific ambitions, and devastating mistakes.”
—Benjamin Jealous, former president and CEO of the NAACP and visiting scholar at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication
“A riveting true story of the race to perform the first heart transplant—a clash of humanity and science that redefined the legal meaning of ‘life.’ Jones brilliantly explores the racial inequities of the unreconstructed South of 1968 and at last brings a modicum of justice to Bruce Tucker, a man whose legacy was his actual heart.”
—Dean King, nationally bestselling author of Skeletons on the Zahara and The Feud
Read more reviews of The Organ Thieves

Chip Jones - Pulitzer-nominated journalist & author

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