Healer [Paperback]

After her successful debut with "Oxygen," I was interested and eager to check out Carol Wiley Cassella's second foray into medical fiction "Healer." "Healer" is only tangentially connected with medicine, however, as its larger focus is about family, marriage, and discovering what is really important about a life lived. Cassella is a terrific story teller and keeps things moving along at a brisk pace--I literally flew through the book--but sometimes I felt like the novel was trying to cover too many topics. As a result, this good book misses the mark somewhat. Plots involving medical research protocol, a marriage filled with deception, a struggle for individuality, a fiscal crisis, a critique of the health care system, a look at migrant workers, and an out-of-left-field mystery all battle for limited space in the book's 300 pages.

At the heart, "Healer" does impress you with its strong central character and that's almost enough to hold everything together. Claire Boehning, after a devastating financial blow, is forced to relocate her family to a small Washington town. Desperate to revive the medical career which she hasn't practiced in fourteen years, Claire takes a position at a local clinic. In the simplest terms, "Healer" is focused (and should have stayed focused) on Claire's adaptation to her new environment. Her difficult daughter, the conflicts with her husband, and her emergence as a confident doctor are really the meat of the story. You want to see Claire succeed and as she does, she starts to realize what was empty about her previous world of privilege. It's good stuff.

I never did feel that the rest of the story was fleshed out effectively, however. Although the family is destitute, they are continually spending. Although Claire's husband ruined them financially, there is little emotional consequence beyond mild annoyance from time to time. These aspects bothered me periodically, but the scenes are so well written--it was hardly enough to upset the flow. The most bizarre and coincidental turn of events do threaten to derail a very personal and human story--near the end, Cassella also wants to introduce thriller aspects into the narrative. It's an odd choice made all the more awkward with its resolution totally reliant on happenstance and convenience. Instead of reigning in the successful elements, the book veers into wildly unnecessary territory. With less plot and more focus, "Healer" might have been a stunning book as opposed to an enjoyable one. Still worth a look if you like "Oxygen."

I'm thrilled to have read another great book by Carol Cassella. HEALER tells so many stories... of a marriage slammed by the great recession, of intrigue in the biotech community, of parents of a hard-to-reach teenage girl, of Nicaraguan immigrants and their tight-night families, of a struggling free clinic in eastern Washington. It's a real page-turner, full of insight and intrigue. If you're looking for a well-written, timely novel that will keep you engrossed from page one, this is for you.

After seeing this book had gotten some pretty great reviews, I was excited to read this. I have not read a book by this author yet and was hoping I would love it and continue to read more of her books. Unfortunately, this book seemed to drag on and I only finished it to see if there would be some unexpected twist at the end,which there was not. I probably will not read another book by this author as this book did not hold my interest at all. Dissapointing!

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