Nadine Feldman, Author

celebrating strong female characters and whatever else strikes my fancy

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Carol Cassella

Good Books Tuesday: Healer by Carol Cassella

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Each week I am on the hunt for good books to recommend. It’s not always easy, and there are plenty of books that don’t make the cut.

These days, though, I seem to have hit a string of good books. Not so long ago I reviewed Carol Cassella’s debut novel, Oxygen, and I was so intrigued that I couldn’t wait to read her follow-up, Healer.

This book begins with our heroine, Claire Boehning, living in reduced circumstances. Her husband is a mover and shaker in the biotech field, but problems with a drug he was developing have halted his ability to gather funds, run tests, and get the drug to market. He has bet their life savings and lost. They’ve had to sell their home and have set up in a run-down property once intended to be razed for a second home. He is traveling, continuing to seek investors, leaving her home with a sullen teenager.

A trained doctor who didn’t follow through on board certification and who never worked once her daughter was born (her complicated pregnancy adds dimension to this relationship and explains some of its complexities), she visits clinic after clinic to look for a job and provide income that she desperately needs. No one wants to take a chance on her. Finally she ends up at a clinic that runs on a shoestring, treating poor individuals, most of them migrant workers. The salary is low, but it allows her to keep her family fed.

As the book progresses, her life continues to unravel as she tries to hold home and family together. The marriage is strained. Questions about medical ethics unfold. Healer touches deeply on the ins and outs of a marriage that had lost its way, and the journey back to what really matters.

Cassella, a doctor herself, did substantial research on the biotech industry for this book, and it shows. She takes a complex topic and breaks it into bites that a reader can understand, without bogging down the narrative.

The great thing about good books is that I hate putting them down. Carol Cassella has done it again!

What good books are you reading?

Book Review: Oxygen by Carol Cassella

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As we continue to settle in up here in Washington State, I’m getting exposed to a whole new-to-me group of writers. Sure, I knew about Garth Stein, author of The Art of Racing in the Rain, but the Seattle area abounds with innovative, creative individuals. In fact, she and several other area writers have formed an organization, The Seattle 7 Writers (which includes ten writers, but who’s quibbling?). This fine organization provides a number of services designed to encourage reading, including creating pocket libraries and other projects to increase literacy in schools.

One of the Seattle 7 is Carol Cassella, who somehow juggles writing, two sets of twins, and, oh yeah, her job as an anesthesiologist. How does she do that? I’m having trouble keeping up with the writing duties. But I digress.

Oxygen is Cassella’s first book, which I liked so much that I bought her second, Healer. Keep watch, it may show up here one day in another review! While reading it, I discovered that Cassella grew up in Texas, so we have that whole Kevin-Bacon-Six-Degrees-of-Separation thing going on.

Dr. Marie Heaton is a respected anesthesiologist who comes face to face with catastrophe: the death of a child on the operating table. As lawyers swarm about like sharks smelling blood, she must also confront a troubled relationship with her aging father, whose eyesight is deteriorating. The lawsuit drags out and escalates to a breathtaking degree while she struggles to understand what happened that horrible day in the OR.

Reading Oxygen, I found myself on unexpected, familiar ground. She led me through my hometown Houston streets, and Dr. Heaton’s experience with her father bore eerie parallels to the decline of my late father-in-law. Also, my own father suffers from macular degeneration, so I know what it feels like to watch a parent going blind.

When a novel leads a reader to an unexpected place, a twist that feels natural and logical, that causes the reader to ask, “Why did I not see that coming?”, it’s a gem in my book. Oxygen does that and more.

Finally, Oxygen is a touching homage to the doctors who genuinely care about their patients. If I were going under the knife, I would be happy to have Dr. Heaton as my anesthesiologist…or better yet, Carol Cassella, since she’s a real person! 🙂