Content: appalachia

Summary:

“Physician, heal thyself,” are words Doctor MacKenzie “Mac” Reardon never thought he would hear although he has seen far too much sickness and death in his thirty years on Earth. The small isolated town of Possum Holler, West Virginia, has suffered numerous tragedies without a doctor and with a hospital that is nearly one hundred miles away. The people are poor and backward. At last, one of their own has managed to become a doctor. Doctor Reardon returns to his hometown to find his own heartache might be something no medicine can heal as he struggles with a narrow-minded community, ignorance, a rocky marriage to a city girl, Felicia Chambry Reardon, and an overwhelming attraction to the new school teacher/principal, Sunny Bankston, at the newly established school. Having met Sunny while in his ER rotation at Cook County Hospital when he was an intern and her having been shot in a school-violence incident, Mac knows the spirit of the woman, a spirit that is more akin to his than the spirit of the woman he married. Mac struggles against overwhelming odds to bring his community into the twenty-first century even as Sunny Bankston battles her own demons, including fighting an attraction to Dr. MacKenzie Reardon. This is a romance that is a bit different. Yes, there is romance of the man/woman kind, but there is also love of community and friendship, driving forces of the story. I want the reader to see growth and change in these characters. I do not want the reader to hate any of them. The main antagonist is a situation of poverty and ignorance, not an individual. All comments welcome.

Chapters: