Helpful Score: 2
After an incredibly clunky first section, this novel settles into a satisfying conclusion to Gordon's trilogy tracing the medical Cole family from the 11th century to present times.
I had just finished reading SHAMAN so I decided to go right into the next book in the series. I can't wait to finish it. Not because I like it, but because I wish I hadn't started it. SHAMAN was wonderful, this story not so. I feel I am being preached to about Affordable Health Care (ObamaCare) and the issues of abortion. The first part of the book drags along with some love story, and I can only hope the story will get better. Sorry Noah, I just don't like it.
Born into a family of physicians, Dr. Roberta Cole has a stern standard to live up to. As a doctor she must deal with not only the life-and-death demands of the healing art but agonizing moral issues where conscience is her only guide.
But when Roberta seeks refuge in rural New England from the pressure-cooker world of big-city medical politics and from the break-up of her marriage to a fellow doctor, she finds even greater challlenges. And soon she is caught up in an affair with a man who has never studied medicine--but knows how to touch her heart.
As her professional practice and private life come together, Roberta Cole faces her hardest test as a doctor and as a woman: whether to keep the medical secret of a girl who has desperately turned to her for help or to betray that trust to keep the love of the man who has filled her life with joy....
But when Roberta seeks refuge in rural New England from the pressure-cooker world of big-city medical politics and from the break-up of her marriage to a fellow doctor, she finds even greater challlenges. And soon she is caught up in an affair with a man who has never studied medicine--but knows how to touch her heart.
As her professional practice and private life come together, Roberta Cole faces her hardest test as a doctor and as a woman: whether to keep the medical secret of a girl who has desperately turned to her for help or to betray that trust to keep the love of the man who has filled her life with joy....
FROM THE PUBLISHER
Down the long generations many sons in the Cole family have been drawn to medicine, but only a few have possessed "the gift," the ability to feel impending death in others. Now, in Matters of Choice the phenomenon emerges again in the brightly lit world of modern science - not in a son, but in a young woman doctor, Roberta Jeanne d'Arc Cole, known as R.J. The first time R.J. disappoints her beloved father is when she is born female; the second, when she chooses to study law rather than medicine. But destiny overtakes her when she discovers that she has inherited "the gift," which sometimes will allow her to intervene and save a life, and sometimes will just give her a chance to say good-bye. Hoping for a simpler, richer life, R.J. forgoes a career at a prestigious Boston hospital for a country practice, but she finds herself facing the same pressing issues she had opted to leave behind in Boston... and the agonizing intimate choices that confront all women.
Down the long generations many sons in the Cole family have been drawn to medicine, but only a few have possessed "the gift," the ability to feel impending death in others. Now, in Matters of Choice the phenomenon emerges again in the brightly lit world of modern science - not in a son, but in a young woman doctor, Roberta Jeanne d'Arc Cole, known as R.J. The first time R.J. disappoints her beloved father is when she is born female; the second, when she chooses to study law rather than medicine. But destiny overtakes her when she discovers that she has inherited "the gift," which sometimes will allow her to intervene and save a life, and sometimes will just give her a chance to say good-bye. Hoping for a simpler, richer life, R.J. forgoes a career at a prestigious Boston hospital for a country practice, but she finds herself facing the same pressing issues she had opted to leave behind in Boston... and the agonizing intimate choices that confront all women.
A little contrived at times but still an enjoyable light read
