This book is definitely more of a 3.5 for me but there was something missing throughout that I just cannot put my finger on. I like the flow of the story. The author easily transitioned from past to present without it being jarring. Her descriptions of the settings and character development were elegantly written. Yet, there was something missing in the plot. When I finished the book, I literally said, "Huh?" because it seemed too abrupt. The author attempted to give the book a beautiful ending but it felt like a big question mark. I wanted more which is not necessarily a bad thing.

I won this book from a Goodreads giveaway. ( )

I really liked a lot of her other books, but I couldn't get all the way to the end of this one. She's a great writer, but the daughter in this book was such an over-the-top brat and the mother such a pushover that I couldn't get past it to enjoy the other characters or the plot. I understand the difficulty of moving and changing schools for a child/teen, as I went through it myself, but the daughter's reaction and behavior in he midst of what is obviously a challenging time for her parents seemed disproportionate to the circumstances she faced, and her reaction to every minor aspect of the move seemed overemphasized, unbalancing the plot. ( )

Bodies are not the only things that sometimes require healing. Sometimes that's true of marriages, relationships of all kinds, our grief, even our own attitudes about our place in the world. That, in brief, is the gist of Carol Cassella's compelling 2010 novel “Healer.”

Two factors caused Claire Boehning to abandon her medical profession just short of certification 14 years earlier. First came the birth of her premature daughter, Jory, and the need to give her her full-time attention. Then there was the stunning success of Addison, her husband, a medical researcher who struck it rich with the development of a cancer drug. Money poured in. They built a spacious home in Seattle, became accustomed to a luxurious lifestyle and even bought a vacation home in a rural area in the Pacific Northwest.

Now, without first talking it over with Claire, Addison has lost everything but that vacation home trying to finance development of another drug after tests go awry. So while Addison struggles to find financial backers to resurrect his research, Claire and Jory are stuck in their small house in Hallum, Wash. Jory misses her friends and her former lifestyle, and somehow resents her mother more than her father for their present isolation. Claire, meanwhile, wonders if her marriage can be saved and, more immediately, if she can make a living practicing medicine in Hallum.

Despite her lack of certification, she is finally hired by a clinic that mostly treats migrant workers. Her pay is minimal and she speaks little Spanish, yet she soon enough becomes indispensable, especially when Dan, the aging doctor who hires her, develops serious medical problems of his own.

In an important subplot, both Claire and Jory develop a close relationship with Miguela, a Nicaraguan refuge who keeps hanging around the clinic even though she does not appear to have any medical condition. It turns out she is trying to learn why her daughter got sick and died after coming to Hallum to work.

A medical school graduate with another degree in English literature, Cassella has written a brief series of novels with medical backdrops. “Oxygen” was terrific, and the same can be said for “Healer.” ( )

I picked this book up because I had read Cassella's debut novel, [b:Oxygen|2916001|Oxygen|Carol Cassella|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1348459261s/2916001.jpg|2943218], several years ago and loved it. Healer, unfortunately, wasn't nearly as interesting. Our protagonist, Claire, has moved to a small mountain town in Washington state with her daughter after her husband has lost everything. They are deeply in debt and Claire must find work, even though she hasn't practiced medicine in fourteen years and never even finished her residency. The only place that will hire Claire is a clinic serving the lower classes of the area, mostly migrant workers. It doesn't take much imagination to know how this one turns out: Claire learns several lessons about humanity, compassion, family, and what it means to be a "healer." There was a bit of drama towards the end, but it isn't worth slowing through this boring read. ( )

good book. Sometimes a little too wordy. But good plot, good family drama, some medical drama mixed in and written well. I recently picked up her other book "Oxygen" and look forward to reading it soon. ( )