Small World, a novel
The true story of a fictional person’s triumph over agoraphobia
by
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Did his father cry when he saw them pulling away? It's possible. It was hard to tell from the tinted window of the limousine. Men of his father’s generation, who “served” in World War II, as the euphemism goes, were stoic and tended not to show emotion. His father was no exception. But this situation seemed to draw out feelings neither knew they had. Tom Small’s young family, a wife and children of 2, 4, and 5 years old, were on their way to England. They would not be back for at least 12 months. In 1992, there was no Facetime or Zoom, and overseas telephone calls were so expensive that they could only be used for news of tragedies. And even then, the conversations were hurried. Once they pulled out of the driveway, that would be it for a year. After all, his father wasn’t a healthy man. A lifetime of smoking and battles with his weight led to heart bypass surgery. He was physically considerably diminished. How his Dad would fare over the next 12 months was a reasonable concern. At 36 years old, Tom was still too young to have mortality much on his mind. So he was surprised, uncomfortable, and even disturbed more than sympathetic when, through the tinted window of the limo, his father’s face appeared to be crumbling. He didn’t think he had ever seen that before. But then again, he hadn’t had many openly emotional experiences with his father. Certainly not in adulthood. Thomas (Tom) Small, M.B., Ph.D. That’s M.B., not M.D., a mistake many people would make, causing him to avoid its use. It’s a Medical Bachelor, a degree denoting a medical education but not a qualification for medical practice. He was an Associate Professor at Thomas Jefferson University (Jefferson) Medical College in Philadelphia. He was proud to be taking his young family on a Sabbatical year to Oxford, England where he would work in a lab studying a disease that had taken on a great personal significance to him. A promising academic taking his young family on a year-long adventure—he liked the sound of that.
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About the Book
What would you do if your spouse and daughter had an illness with no cure? For Tom Small, a professor and researcher at a Philadelphia medical school, the answer is anything it takes. Tom believes a discovery he made with a Nobel Prize-winning scientist at Oxford could hold the key to a cure. But turning this discovery into treatment requires millions of dollars—and that means navigating the unfamiliar and sometimes hostile worlds of venture capital and pharmaceutical companies. Raised in a working-class family and haunted by self-doubt since boyhood, Tom’s journey is one of resilience. As a troubled youth during the Vietnam War era, he was a hopeless truant and trouble maker and was nearly expelled from middle school until a surprise aptitude test score propelled him to college at 14. Now, his own insecurities and phobias are dwarfed by his determination to save his family. This novel, based loosely on a true story, blends the charm and wit of Tom Sawyer and My Family and Other Animals with the profound urgency of Lorenzo’s Oil. With humor, heart, and plenty of candid self-reflection, Small World follows a young family forced to confront challenges they never imagined, pushing themselves to the limits in their quest for a cure.
About the Author
Timothy M. Block, Ph.D and his wife, Joan, founded the Hepatitis B Foundation in 1991 with Jan and Paul Witte. The Foundation is dedicated to advocating for a cure for hepatitis B. To carry out research for a cure, Block founded and ran the Baruch S. Blumberg Institute (2003) and the Pennsylvania Biotechnology Center (2006), which is now one of the nation’s leading life sciences incubators. He retired in 2022. Block is the author of hundreds of scholarly papers and the recent book “Curing Disease from the Ground Up” (Springer Nature). He is also retired from Professorships at Jefferson, Drexel and Yale Medical Schools and lives with his wife in Pennsylvania.