BKMT READING GUIDES
Healer: A Novel
by Carol Cassella
Hardcover : 304 pages
2 clubs reading this now
1 member has read this book
Introduction
Claire Boehning's life of privilege and ease in Seattle comes crashing down thanks to her husband, Addison's, gamble on a biotech venture. Now they must retreat with their 14-year-old daughter to a bare-bones ranch house in rural Washington, where Claire struggles to revive a long-dormant medical career in order to support her family. The follow-up to Carol Cassella's national bestseller Oxygen, Healer explores the fallout of broken trust, the ongoing struggle to be truly understood, and the ultimate redemption of love and family.
Amazon Exclusive: Garth Stein Reviews Healer
Garth Stein is the author of The Art of Racing in the Rain, Raven Stole the Moon, How Evan Broke His Head and Other Secrets, and Enzo. Die Kunst, ein Mensch zu Sein.
It's tough to follow a spectacular debut like Oxygen, Carol Cassella's striking first novel, with an even stronger second novel, but she's done it with Healer.
Claire, Jory and Addison Boehning find themselves strapped to a runaway train of personal financial collapse, with only each other to cling to, and only each other to blame. Their precipitous fall from the rarified air of security and prosperity is the consequence of Addison's brilliant but risky shot at developing a cutting-edge cancer drug. With their old life in shreds, Claire, who abandoned a medical career fourteen years earlier, is forced to redefine her entire life: yesterday, she was the wealthy wife of Seattle's hottest biotech wizard; today, she is the heart and soul--and breadwinner--for her foundering family.
With Cassella's dynamic novel, something is always lingering under the surface; her narrative develops from a story of marital love and strife into a suspenseful, gripping story that is both provocative and gratifying. She leads the reader into unfamiliar and intriguing worlds peopled with vivid, complex characters. There are no blatant good guys and bad guys in Healer, no simple blacks and whites. Cassella's characters come in myriad shades of gray that make up the complex psyche of all human beings. And when money competes with good intentions, Cassella doesn't shy away from negotiating the murky ethical areas where profit and altruism collide, weaving questions of immigration, health care, and the power of big pharma into a page turning drama. I highly recommend this compelling new book by this remarkable author.
Excerpt
· 1 · The body is a miracle, the way it heals. A factory of sur- vival and self-repair. As soon as flesh is cut, cells spontaneously begin to divide and knit themselves into a protective scar. A million new or- ganic bonds bridge the broken space, with no judgment passed on the method of injury. In her residency, Claire had treated a trauma patient who'd felt only one quick tug, looked down at her severed hand and wondered to whom on earth it might belong; even pain can be stunned into silence by the imperative to live. As many years as it has been, Claire still understands the human body. She understands the involuntary mechanics of healing. But how an injured marriage heals--that remains a mystery. This house feels so cold. Claire's fingers had been a shocking white from the knuckles to the tips after she stripped off her gloves when they finished unloading the U-Haul a few hours ago. She should be somewhat warmer by now, indoors, but it's as if the cold has worked its way into her core and radiates outward, chilling the room. They haven't been out to the house since summer, and dust coats every surface; seed-shaped mouse droppings dot the sofa cushions and countertops. The pallid light seeping through the windows seems too weak to hold color; everything in the room is muted to a shade of gray. Jory sits on a cardboard box with her arms hugged across her stom- 1 Cassella_Healer_CV_PTR.indd 1 4/13/11 12:45 PM 2 Carol Wiley Cassella ach, her hair draped around her shoulders. "When is Dad getting here?" she asks. "Between business trips. He'll come as soon as he can." Claire says this calmly, soothingly, the way she tries to say everything to Jory these days; announcing breakfast cereal choices and packing instructions as if they were salves, verbal Vicodin or Xanax. She kneels to open the door on the cast-iron woodstove and crumples newspaper between broken sticks, watching Jory without watching. Hunting for other emotions behind her sullen anger. Claire strikes a match, shelters it in- side her cupped palm until it burns plump and dependable, touches it to an edge of newsprint and a week of stock quotes flames into hot or- ange light. The smoke stings her eyes, she squints and closes the thick glass door, toggles the metal lever of the damper until the sluggish air inside the chimney rouses and twists silver-gray tendrils up into the night. Jory is quiet for a while, then says, almost accusingly, "We don't have very much wood." Claire flinches, hears it as, "Fathers build fires, mothers only turn up thermostats," wants to retort that they have a lot less of everything they are used to, thanks to her husband. "We have plenty of wood out in the shed," she answers. "I should teach you how to get the stove going." Jory ignores her, tucking her hands between her knees and turning toward the windows so that all Claire sees is the fall of gold hair. "It's a good woodstove," Claire continues. The Realtor had told them that, hadn't he? She hadn't really cared at the time; they'd never expected to sleep here in winter. "I'll call the furnace man tomorrow. And Dad can bring some space heaters when he comes." "School starts tomorrow," Jory says. Claire chucks bits of wood onto the conflagrant pile and slams the stove door before they can spill out. "School starts tomorrow," Jory repeats, taunting her now. Claire looks up and answers her, for the first time today, in the voice of an equal. "It will be all right. There's a school in Hallum if we stay very long." She sees Jory's stony expression and adds, "Or you can homeschool if you want. Whatever you want." Jory seems to grow smaller, as if she would clench herself into a Cassella_Healer_CV_PTR.indd 2 4/13/11 12:45 PM Healer 3 tight ball. Her face is locked inside her crossed arms so that her voice is barely audible. "I want to go back." Claire sits on the ash-covered hearth and stares at the burning cin- ders tumbling against the glass like small animals scrambling to escape an inferno. "Well. There is no going back. Not yet." The words come out as stern as a slap, not what she'd intended; she clenches her teeth at the sound. But other words still burn inside her head, words she chokes be- fore she can hurt the people she loves--a litany of all they can't go back to: no private school, no ballet lessons, no abiding trust that tomorrow will be the same or better than today. Not even the leeway to haggle for a fair offer on their lakeside home in Seattle. It seems a perverse joke, Claire thinks, that after years of saving and insuring it had not been a fire or flood or disease that brought their world down. It wasn't global warming or terrorism, no collapsing levies or tsunamis--none of the headline threats that had spurred her to re- stock their Rubbermaid emergency boxes and stash wads of cash in suit jacket pockets at the back of the closet. Instead, for Claire and Addison and Jory, it felt quite personal, like a precisely-placed bomb destroying only their lives, leaving their neighbors and friends to stand unscathed and sympathetically gawking. Claire had discovered the first hint of their ruination smoldering in a declined Visa credit card on a Christmas shopping trip with Jory, buying, of all the ironic possibilities, a twelve dollar collapsible umbrella. She'd left a message on Addison's cell phone warning him that their credit card number had been hacked, thinking the problem lay with the bank or the computer system. Surely they had been wronged by some outside force. The daylight has almost faded but she doesn't want to leave the fire even to turn on the light. It is easier with Addison away. The thought darts across the surface of Claire's subconscious with the speed of an endangered bird. Jory is staring down at the scarred pine floor, obliv- ious to her mother's distress. Claire can keep up a front for Jory-- mothering teaches you that from the first reassuring smile you give your toddler after a tumble. But if Addison were here he would see through Claire, she is sure. He would see her doubt and then the doubt could become real--could become the edge of the splitting maul. It Cassella_Healer_CV_PTR.indd 3 4/13/11 12:45 PM 4 Carol Wiley Cassella almost makes her want their life here to be too difficult without him. If they can make it alone, just Jory and her, what unites their family except the tenuous hold of memories? Jory is shivering and Claire hunts around for a box that might hold sweaters. She rips packing tape off cartons of china and shoes and bedding, the gritty sound of tearing cardboard almost welcome in the face of Jory's determined silence. In the third box Claire finds some of Addison's ancient high school track sweatshirts protectively folded around candlesticks and vases and a favorite Waterford bowl. She tosses a sweatshirt to Jory and pulls another one over her own head, cinch- ing the hood close around her face, smelling something familiar in the thick cotton: a musty hint of old wood, or even, she imagines, Addi- son's gym locker, the indelible perfume of his adolescent sweat. She lines the fragile crystal pieces along the mantelpiece, dusting the bowl with her sleeve before she sets it down. "Why are you unpacking that stuff?" Jory asks through her cloak of hair. "No reason to leave everything in storage." Claire unwraps a serv- ing platter, searching her emotional reserves for some way to mitigate the desolation she hears in her daughter's voice. "They're pretty, aren't they? We might as well enjoy them while we're here." "They'll just get dirty. Or broken." "Your grandmother gave us this plate, right before you were born." Claire looks at her distorted image in the silver, imagines her own mother sitting down for dinner with them in this drafty room, pursing her lips as she serves herself slices of tomato or fruit tart while Claire tries to explain why they've moved. "Put it on the table for me, please?" Jory doesn't move. Claire sets the platter on top of another un- opened box and stands up, brushes the ash off her blue jeans. "Let's go into town for dinner." Without looking at her, Jory says, "I thought we couldn't afford to eat out anymore." "We can't." Claire pats her pockets and kicks aside the newspapers scattered beside the woodbin. "Where did I leave my keys?" · · · Cassella_Healer_CV_PTR.indd 4 4/13/11 12:45 PM Healer 5 Food helps. The cheaper and greasier the better, sometimes. Over a cheeseburger Jory starts to talk again: a conversation about hair straighteners--what is the ideal width of the irons? Can eyelash curlers really pull out your lashes? And ballet, of course, her friends at the dance school and what they think of the recital piece. Maybe she could get new pointe shoes mailed to her, since there is no place to buy them in this itsy town. Claire has begun to view adolescence as a compartmentalized, re- volving door. Openings flash by into different sectors of her daughter's life and the trick is to stand close at hand, poised and ready to jump in. There is a time-warping aspect to it: a flash forward to Jory at eighteen, competent and hopeful; a glimpse back to Jory at eight, vocal, with fresh, uninhibited awe. Claire pushes her French fries across the Formica table toward her daughter and rests her chin on interlaced hands. "We'll drive back to Seattle when you need new toe shoes. It's not so far if the passes are clear. We can make a weekend of it now and then. Get your friends together." She doesn't bring up the fact that there is no ballet school in Hallum Valley. "Once the furniture comes how about you invite some friends over here?" "Like, to do what?" "Ski. Hike. Mountain bike." Claire eats another French fry, stalling to come up with something teenage girls might actually enjoy in Hal- lum. "I don't know. What do you want to do?" "Go to the movies. Shop. Hang out in the mall. Nothing we can do here." Jory drifts into silence again. "Speaking of, where am I supposed to sleep tonight?" "Were we speaking of that? Just share with me tonight." The house is minimally furnished with a sofa they'd bought at a yard sale last sum- mer, a set of folding metal chairs and a dining table. But until the mov- ing truck arrives they have only the old double bed they'd squeezed into the U-Haul with some smaller boxes. "We'll be warmer that way." She expects Jory to balk at this suggestion, but instead her face softens, as if she's been relieved of an unexpressed burden. It occurs to Claire that it is the very mattress Jory was conceived upon. Cassella_Healer_CV_PTR.indd 5 4/13/11 12:45 PM 6 Carol Wiley Cassella The waitress brings the check over and asks if they want any des- sert. Claire orders two ice creams and a coffee only to postpone look- ing at the bill. Every penny of it will be borrowed; they are borrowing to pay interest on borrowed money. What's another ice cream? Jory slides the plastic binder that holds the check toward herself and flips it open to see the total, then slaps it shut again and pushes it back to her mother. "Let's say Dad finds a new investor next week. Can we buy our house back?" She flashes the comic grin that has always signaled she is near the edge, ready to snatch her feelings back at the slightest threat and turn everything into a joke. Claire does her best to smile. Her mouth turns up, she can force that, but she can't seem to make the rest of her face--her exhausted eyes, her knotted brows--go along. She wants to ask Jory how much she's over- heard behind closed doors, what rumors she's picked up at school be- yond the explanations Addison and Claire have given her. And at the same time Claire doesn't want to know. She doesn't have the heart to reassure Jory, yet again, that the family is the house, and thus it will go wherever they go and can never be sold or lost. But as if graced by a mo- ment of precocious instinct, Jory averts her gaze from her mother's face, suddenly intent on drawing faces in her melted ice cream. "We'll find a better house this time. You get your pick of rooms," Claire says. Jory lets out one short laugh without looking up and Claire can't tell if she appre- ciates this effort at optimism or is scoffing at her mother's simplification. "So," Jory says after a deep sigh, her tone altogether new, as if the prior sentences had been spoken by other people in some other place. "What are you doing tomorrow?" "Unpacking. Dusting. Want to help?" "No," Jory answers, rocking back on her chair. "Great! I get to decorate your room, then?" Claire asks, hungry for her own ice cream again. "I thought I'd just paint bull's-eyes around the spots of mildew on the walls. So what are you doing after you unpack?" "After we unpack?" Claire picks up her spoon and pulls the sweet thick cream onto her tongue, a simple pleasure. Any topic feels easy to her now. "I might start looking for a job." Cassella_Healer_CV_PTR.indd 6 4/13/11 12:45 PM Healer 7 "A job?" Jory sounds dumbfounded, and the front legs of the chair slam onto the concrete floor. "Doing what?" Claire cocks her head at Jory's incredulity, gives her a moment to backpedal before she answers, "Being a doctor. What else? Should I try to earn money as a professional mother?" Jory considers this. She looks at her mother appraisingly, and a flash of the eighteen-year-old whips by. "I can't see you as a doctor." Claire shrugs and spoons a lump of ice cream into her coffee, watches the ivory whirl blend to an even chocolate hue. Jory's snorts--the four- teen-year-old returns. "I mean, I know you're a doctor. But you've, like, probably forgotten everything by now. I mean, how long has it been since you actually took care of a patient?" "Well, how old are you?" "Fourteen. And three months. And thirteen days," Jory answers after a moment's calculation. "Okay. It's been fourteen years, six months, and twenty days since I saw a patient," Claire answers, remembering those last weeks in bed, unsuccessfully willing her own uterus to hold quiet and nur- ture Jory's wispy lungs one more day, one more hour, to inch her over the line of survival. All Claire's years of medical training would have felt absurdly pointless if the final price paid was losing this life inside her. "God. Please don't make me the first guinea pig," Jory says. "So, are you going to wear a white coat and all?" "I don't know. Is that what makes somebody a doctor?" Jory is quiet for a moment. She studies her mother with a skeptical look on her face that makes Claire feel oddly insecure. Or maybe it isn't skepticism--maybe it's embarrassment. Is she embarrassed to think about her mother seeing actual patients, possibly her own classmates, if indeed she deigns to attend school in Hallum? Claire shifts uncomfortably in her seat and fingers the handle of her coffee cup. Then she tucks her hands between her knees and leans across the table confidentially, "Maybe you can help me write a résumé. Know how?" Jory shakes her head but sucks in her bottom lip, prob- ably considering the opportunities she might wrangle out of this offer. Cassella_Healer_CV_PTR.indd 7 4/13/11 12:45 PM view abbreviated excerpt only...Discussion Questions
From the publisher:1. Claire is shocked and angry to learn the extent of Addison's financial gambling, and feels betrayed that he hid it from her. However, Claire also hides her true feelings from Jory, so much that it exhausts her. Why do you think she does this?
2. What role does money play in the relationship between Claire and Addison?
3. The story provides several examples of the relationship between mothers and children: Claire and Jory, Miguela and Esperanza, and Frida and her son. How are they similar and different? How do these relationships illustrate the sacrifices made for the sake of family?
4. Do you think Addison is a dreamer? Is he selfish? Is he more scientist or more businessman?
5. How do their shared experiences affect the relationship between Claire and Addison by the end of the story? They leave lasting scars, but do they also make it stronger?
Weblinks
» |
Publisher's Book Info
|
» |
Author Carol Cassella's web site
|
» |
Request a Call-in to your book club
|
» |
Discussion Questions from Carol as well as Q&A
|
Notes From the Author to the Bookclub
Note from author Carol Cassella: My story is one too many of us have borne in these last few years and though Healer began as pure fiction, my own life took an ironic and eerily parallel path to that of my protagonist Claire Boehning, a doctor who watches her privileged life turn inside out when her husband's biotech venture collapses in a storm of accusations and lies. I write from my heart as a doctor, a wife and mother, and now a struggling survivor of the real estate debacle that took my own husband's job. I feel blessed to be coming out the other side, but I have a profound appreciation for how this recession has affected family relationships and personal values. Why am I telling you this? Because the soul of a good novel is its ability to connect readers and authors at an intimate level of common experiences. We are all in this life together. Putting your heart on the page for readers is both frightening and exhilarating, and ultimately a novel is the product of both our imaginations—yours and mine. I hope you find Healer engaging, illuminating and, above all, entertaining. Thank you so much for sharing the journey!Book Club Recommendations
Recommended to book clubs by 0 of 0 members.
Book Club HQ to over 88,000+ book clubs and ready to welcome yours.
Get free weekly updates on top club picks, book giveaways, author events and more