The Fifth Harmonic: A NOVEL [Hardcover]

Plot

Longtime dedicated Internist, Will Cecil Burleigh, MD. has just sold his lifelong practice. It seems that Will has just learned that he has a, nearly always, fatal form of Cancer, one whose prescribed treatment is so radical and so horrifyingly disfiguring that he has elected to forgo conventional treatment.

The Story

Our story opens with our protagonist in his car sitting in front of a storefront in a local retail strip center. The storefront is unmarked, except for the word HEALER in rather small writing.

Will is trying to talk himself out of going in, being the questioning cynical kind of person he is but he has promised an old patient, Savanna Walters, who was herself diagnosed with a troubling case of Big C but now seemed to be cured, that he would see this, what? Alternative Doctor? New Age Practitioner? Shamen? Con Artist? Healer? After all Savanna claimed she saved her life.

Upon entering, the good doctor meets Maya Quennell and is smitten with her beauty. She is ostensibly in her late thirties with dark hair and skin and jade colored eyes. The offspring of a Mayan maiden and a French journalist born in Algeria and raised in France and America.

After examining Will on two separate occasions, Maya informs him that she cannot cure him that only Mother Earth can and that his only chance of survival is to stop being a skeptic (it interferes with her kind of healing) and unload all his earthly possessions, give half to charity, put half in a trust for his daughter and go with her to Mexico for treatment.

Well, this is too much for a logical person to accept so Will says sorry, to which Maya says you must, "Gaea" (Mother Earth) wills it and and she smiles on you and will give you a sign.

After an abbreviated trip to wine country in France, Will receives what he takes as a sign.

Back in the USA, Though still skeptical, Will agrees to go with Maya but being the practical person he is, hires a private investigator to check Maya out. What he finds out manages to confuse rather than clarify and the investigator says he will keep investigating after Will leaves and update him via email.

So off Will and Maya go, to what Maya calls Mesoamerica an area between the Yucatan Peninsula and the Pacific Ocean, the original home of the Mayan people on a jungle adventure and a date with "Gaea" during the full Moon, to try and save Will's life.

Conclusion

First of all the book is a little short, being only 213 pages long. That itself isn't so bad but the story suffered for it by not getting developed as good as I know Wilson is capable of doing. It almost seems like he was in a hurry to finish.

Personally, and I'm not going to let this influence my rating, I thought the story was a little hoaky, though it flowed well and was an entertaining and fast read. Ultimately it smacked of science fiction. Now I have no problem with science fiction, I just like it to be more definitive and not be merged with an adventure/medical thriller.

If I've led you to believe I didn't like the book that much, I'm sorry. I did like the book. It is a quick, fun, easy read but it's not up to Wilson's usual standards. Don't be surprised to see a sequel or two following.