For agents and publishers
Matthew Siljander, MD
Orthopedic surgeon and engineer. Author of the memoir The Good Thing Is.
Managed by Todd Hoffman, Storied Media Group.
The book
The Good Thing Is
Scalpel, Spotlight, and the Fight No One Saw
Build everything. Lose the plan. Now what.
- Genre
- Memoir
- Length
- About 61,000 words, with essays being added
- Shape
- A prologue, four parts (Build, Lead, Break, Rebuild), 23 chapters, and The Roadmap, 18 practical steps that close the book
- Status
- Full draft written. Adding essays now.
- Available
- Proposal and full manuscript on request
An engineer who saved a factory millions becomes a hip and knee surgeon doing over 500 cases a year. One year into practice, a diagnosis changes the plan. He keeps operating for years and tells almost no one. Then he picks his last day himself.
Told scene by scene, from an egg drop in third grade to an operating room singing on the last day of surgery, and the rebuilding after.
Finding the good thing does not mean calling the bad thing good. It means refusing to let the bad thing become the only thing that is true.
Who it's for
It's for everyone. Anyone building a life or leading people.
This story is mine. The question it leaves belongs to you.
Platform
- Good Thing Monday, every week since June 2026, on LinkedIn and Substack
- Most read LinkedIn post: nearly 100,000 impressions
- City Boy: A Novel of 1903, published 2026
- Lampway, a family Bible app, on Google Play since September 2026
- 38 publications, cited over 1,000 times. US Patent 10,342,608
- Keynotes built on my story: against the odds, and what came after
- Listed in Google's AI search summary among the core orthopedic voices on LinkedIn writing about identity and resilience, October 2026
Get in touch
Write to me directly. I read every one.
Or write to me directly: matthew@matthewsiljandermd.com
Film and TV
Film and TV inquiries are welcome too. Todd helps with connections on the film side. Write to me directly.