Suddenly-Barbara Delinsky

Suddenly
Barbara Delinsky
Morrow, Apr 2008, $18.95
ISBN: 9780066214580

In Tucker, Vermont, pediatrician Mara O'Neill died from carbon monoxide poisoning. Her best friend and practice partner thirty-nine years old Dr. Paige Pfeiffer is stunned by the news. However, even more shocking to the pediatrician is when the autopsy reveals Valium in Mara’s blood, the police rule most likely suicide. Paige refuses to believe that is true as her friend was euphoric over the adoption of a child from India.

Pediatric practice partner Angie Bigelow feels Mara’s death is the end of her once happy marriage to Peter Grace, who was having an affair with the deceased. Paige is in denial that her friend since college is dead. However, she honors Mara by caring for the Asian infant that the late doctor was adopting at the same time struggling with her desires for Noah Perrine, acting head of the private school where she coaches the Mount Court Academy’s Girls Cross Country team.

This is a reprint of an early 1990s character study. Ironically, Barbara Delinsky provides readers a deep look at Paige and to a lesser degree Angie; but through them Mara. The story line makes a case that it takes a well rounded person to do a good job raising a child. Although the independent women SUDDENLY seem too dependent on men, fans will appreciate the deep look at each of the females as Mara’s death cuts through them like a surgical knife in this entertaining fiction.

Harriet Klausner