Joseph Levy leads a quiet life in rural Wheaton, Arizona. Retired from a long career in psychiatric research and practice, he reads, writes, and wanders through the mountains and hills near the Native reservation.

His quiet life ends, however, when a dental crown replacement goes poorly just before meeting an internet date in California. Thus begins a year of back-to-back nightmare infections, a drug overdose, and two failed relationships.

At every step, Levy is confronted by matters of life and death, love and hate, faith and doubt, trust and betrayal. Most of all, he faces what it means to be sick and to be healthy. He prays to his God, relies on his friends, examines his dreams, and entrusts his psyche to a new therapist.

Joseph Levy Escapes Death is a tale of medical comedic horror and perseverance in the face of relentless adversity. This is the first novel by psychiatrist Rick Strassman - author of the best-selling DMT: The Spirit Molecule and co-producer of the hugely popular independent documentary by the same name.

Here, he paints his protagonist’s journey with a wide palette: medical, psychoanalytic, and religious - Jewish and Buddhist. Enlightening detours include discussions of love in the time of internet dating, cardiovascular physiology and microbiology, the Holocaust and Jewish-Christian relations, and the psychotherapeutic process.

Reactions to Joseph Levy are rarely neutral, and vary according to a person’s own psyche. Reviewers compare Strassman’s first novel to works by Kafka, Philip Roth, JD Sallinger, John Irving (Cider House Rule, The World According to Garp), and Joseph Heller (Catch-22).