In Grabbing Fog, Sophia Kim Apple—a trailblazing Korean American physician whose life was shaped by the poliovirus—emerges as a powerful new voice for women in medicine.
This thought-provoking narrative continues the journey begun in her debut work inspired by real events, COVID‑19, weaving a deeply personal and medically rich story set against the backdrop of America’s twin pandemics: a global virus and a reckoning with racial injustice. The novel opens on the turbulent day of June 4, 2020, with a harrowing incident: A Black woman is injured during a protest following a volatile confrontation with her Hasidic Jewish roommate. What follows is an emotional unraveling of blame, fear, and fractured identities. Corpses fill refrigerated trucks on the streets of New York City. A shooting incident erupts inside a hospital, where a diverse group of physicians—immigrants and children of immigrants—hide, argue and fracture under the weight of fear and cultural trauma. Each of them bears the burden of history: the scars of discrimination, echoes of ancestral displacement, the heavy silence of being grouped as “other” among society. Dr. Apple deftly unites scientific fact with historical insight. She unearths forgotten moments and figures in medical history; she interrogates how science is interpreted, distorted and politicized—especially when tangled with race, fear, and personal greed.Grabbing Fog is more than a chronicle of medicine or a cultural autopsy of a nation in crisis. It is a spiritual meditation. She reflects on how Americans suffer a deficit of imagining the inner lives of other people. In our pursuit of certainty, we replace empathy with blame, and curiosity with fear. We cling to comfortable narratives, even if false, and reject inconvenient truths, even those whispered by God through suffering, science, and silence.
This story is an urgent, lyrical call to resist chaos that drives us apart, and to reclaim the sacred, shared humanity that can draw us together. 

Stories of actual incidents ignite our hearts and demand attention. Incidents in my new novel portray a female pathologist promoted to department chair. She encounters powerful forces of indoctrinated prejudice and in medicine and exposes false assumptions about medical-legal justice. Pressures mount as she renders a tragic pathology diagnosis and lawyers become involved. Ultimately, the doctor presents a case to decontaminate the poisons in this world of unforgiveness. FORGIVE TO LIVE at Amazon and at Smashwords eBooks. Share the links!

“Pathology is one of the most misunderstood fields of medicine. In Doctor Apple’s book, she makes it clear what pathologist do, the joys and rewards of practicing pathology, and why she choose to enter the field. This is a must-read for any medical student contemplating their choice of specialty, any physician trying to better understand their pathology colleagues, and any patient who may incur the services of a pathology laboratory.” —Michael H. Kanter, MD, CPPS, Professor and Chair, Clinical Science, Kaiser Permanente Bernard J. Tyson School of Medicine.

Ms. Apple is a practicing pathologist…she brings a perspective to the effect of the pandemic that unfortunately is seldom seen, and millions would be enriched and informed by her unique vision…The story begins with a woman intern pathologist arriving on Hart Island to an unimaginable scene of mass burials. The web of relationships and events expands to an international scope. This is a medical but personal story, not a political one. I hope everyone can read and share this book, whose proceeds are going to charity.

—Book reviews on Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08P7486XX