[2] Life on the Ground Floor was released on 11 April 2017 as a follow-up to Maskalyk's first book, Six Months in Sudan.

[4] The stories are mostly set in Toronto or Addis Ababa and each offer unusual perspectives of working in hospital emergency departments.

[4] While reviewing the book, Heather Mallick of the Toronto Star described Maskalyk as "A master of the medical memoir.

"[4] André Picard praised Maskalyk for his humility and for avoiding the common pitfalls made by Western observers of low-income countries: "the strength of the book is that it captures the viscera, real and symbolic, of the ER – its sights, sounds, smells, pulse – without romanticizing the work.

[10][11][12] Accordingly to the judging panel, Maskalyk: "reveals compelling universal truths about the power, and limits, of medicine — 'life caring for itself,' as he defines it — the strength of human will, and the fragile, infinitesimal gap between dying and living,"[11] Also in 2017, the novel was nominated for the Toronto Book Awards.