Healer – Carol Wiley Cassella (June 2011)

When I chose this book I knew that it would be a different read for me! I was grappling between two books about "friends on a beach in the summer" when I saw this one on the enormous book table at Costco. Reading the back of Healer I was curious to read a story with something in addition to romance, it had the story of a woman who had given up her medical career to raise her daughter, going back to work after 15 years in order to save her family and her marriage. I was intrigued and I was sold (or so the book was)!

I have to be honest… this one was not my favorite of the summer, yet when I approached the last 80 pages, I could not put it down. I had to know what would happen to the Boehning family. Let me explain…

Claire and Addison, our two main characters, fell in love when Claire was in med school and Addison was a genius biochemist on the brink of developing something big, a treatment for ovarian cancer. With the success of the drug, the couple was thrust into a lifestyle lived by the “rich and famous” of Seattle. Money was never an issue and it was spent freely. Their one and only daughter Jory had everything a teenager could imagine: popularity, good looks and a talent for ballet.

Soon the family would fall upon hard times as funding for a new cancer drug in a trial phase was cut upon the revelation that test mice were developing liver damage. Addison’s struggle to convince any major drug company to buy the formula and create the medication meant that his family would have to sell their large home (moving out the day after Christmas) and move to their crumbling vacation home in rural Hallum. Claire and daughter Jory spend their initial weeks in Hallum simply coming to grips with the severity of the situation. When the propane tank runs out of gas (mid-winter) they fear they may freeze to death as credit cards have been cancelled and bank accounts are empty to pay bills. Claire even mentions paying credit card bills with other credit cards.

The story twists as tension builds in the Boehning’s marriage amidst: financial problems, a depressed teenager who has not fully been told that her family is broke and Claire’s new profession at a clinic treating some of the neediest people with some of the more primitive health care equipment. This story really makes you question the power of money and the impact it can really have on a marriage, on happiness and most importantly in this story, on trust.