Dr. David Weill at GDBS

The Garden District Book Shop is pleased to welcome New Orleans native and renowned transplant doctor, Dr. David Weill, on December 11 to launch his second memoir Tell Me I Belong: A Journey Across Faiths and Generations. The event will take place at the New Orleans Opera Guild which is conveniently located down the street from the shop.

Weill grew up in New Orleans the only son of a world-famous Jewish pulmonologist and a Southern Baptist mother. Religion was never discussed in his home, and as a young child, Weill always felt something was amiss—that he never quite fit in with either his Christian or Jewish friends. These feelings stayed with him even as he became the head of heart and lung transplant at Stanford University, which led to two journeys of discovery: first, converting to Catholicism, and then embarking on an intense search for his Jewish roots after he discovered his mother had converted.

Weill takes the reader on his journey—hiring investigators in Berlin, who found his grandfather’s records of his time imprisoned in the Buchenwald concentration camp; a heart-wrenching trip to Berlin to find his father’s first home—and ultimately does the internal work to define himself.

The author event will begin at 6:00 PM. Weill will read a portion of his book and then open up the floor for guests’ questions. The event is free and open to the public but interested parties are encouraged to RSVP and reserve their books ahead of time on Eventbrite.