The Lovesick Cure
By Pamela Morsi
Publisher: Harlequin Mira
Release Date: August 28, 2012
First, Jesse Winsloe lost a job she had held and loved for
eight years, earth sciences teacher at Tulsa’s Lake Grove Middle School. Then,
she lost her fiancé, principal of that school, who now expects Jesse to have
lunch with him and his new wife to “clear the air.” It’s hardly surprising that the invitation
pushes Jesse to go along with her mother and stepfather’s suggestion that she
leave Tulsa and pay a visit to Aunt Will, her nearest paternal relative, who
lives in the Ozark community of Marrying Stone, Arkansas, where Jesse’s father
had grown up.
Aunt Will is Marrying Stone’s “granny woman,” valued for as much
for her practical wisdom as for her knowledge of the healing properties of herbs,
midwifery, and other folk remedies. She has retired from this role, sold her
home, and moved to Onery Cabin, built by her great-grandfather, an isolated log
cabin on a mountainside farm, accessible by automobile only with a four-wheel
drive vehicle. Despite her retirement,
people still approach her for “cures,” but Jesse doesn’t have to ask. Aunt Will,
who “knows a lot about mending broken hearts,” volunteers a “plain and simple” cure
for Jesse’s “lovelorn solitaries,” six nights of applying a foul-smelling
poultice during the phase of the waning moon.
Erwin Frederick “Piney” Baxley, Jr. is a physician’s
assistant who returned to Marrying Stone after he was licensed and set up a
community clinic in the first floor of his home. Except for one day a week when
a doctor holds office hours in the clinic, Piney provides the medical care for
Marrying Stone. He is the single father of a seventeen-year-old basketball
star. Piney loves his community and his son is the center of his life, but he’s
wary of a relationship with a local woman since he’s a two-time loser at love
with his former wife. Jesse reminds him that he is more than his job, more than
the father of a teenager. They like one another, and a short-term friendship
with benefits may be just what both Piney and Jesse need—or they may discover
they need much more.
Readers familiar with Marrying
Stone and Simple Jess, two of Morsi’s
Americana romances from the 90s, will recognize the setting, although The Lovesick Cure is contemporary. In
fact, the heroine’s gets her Ozark nickname “DuJess” from the old timers in
Marrying Stone who still remembered Jesse Best when Jesse Winsloe was born and
thus called her “Deux Jesse.” Morsi does
a superb job in the new book with presenting Marry Stone in the 21st
century, a place that has retained the uniqueness of a traditional mountain
community but with touches such as Wi-Fi at the clinic, cell phones, Camryn’s Goth
look, and Dr. Mo (Dr. Mohammed El Azziz) as reminders that even so isolated a
place as Marrying Stone, Arkansas, has changed with the passing years.
Aunt Will’s story, its past and its present, is interwoven
with the story of Jesse and Piney and, to a lesser degree, of Tree and Camryn.
All of the characters have the genuineness and likeability that are typical of
characters created by Morsi. I always
end a Morsi book with the warm feeling that her characters have earned a place
in my heart and in my memory.
There is a certain
humor in Aunt Will’s cure for lovesickness. An empathetic reader will likely laugh and cringe at the help Aunt Will gives
Jesse in removing the hardened poultice. And I think Piney’s informing Jess
that the stench the cure left behind is unmistakable may be the first time I’ve
seen an H/H relationship begin with the hero telling the heroine she literally stinks.
But Jesse’s time with Aunt Will does effect a cure. When she first arrives,
Jesse is filled with a mix of emotions, none of them good: “Jesse was bereft
and embarrassed and confused. She was hurt and angry. And she hated the pity
she saw in people’s eyes.” After a few weeks, she begins to realize that
something was missing in her relationship with her former fiancé: “Their
relationship had two speeds: ‘just friends’ or ‘in bed.’ And they had always
done better with the former than the latter.” Piney completes her education in
exactly what was missing.
Tree and Camryn’s story is real enough to make
a reader with teenage children turn pale, and it’s also a bit of a gender twist
since it’s the girl who is pushing for them to become fully sexually active. I
found it easy to sympathize with Camryn’s fears that Tree will leave her behind
and Tree’s determination to resist repeating his father’s mistakes. Tree’s
relationship with Piney is another significant thread in this intricately woven
narrative. Piney’s description of a parent’s responsibilities will strike home
with many readers.
A father had to think about everything, consider everything.
Piney understood that he had to view the “big picture” of his son. It was not
enough to revel in his athletic achievements. Tree had to develop his intellect
and his character, as well. He was going to go out in the world, and it was his
father’s responsibility to see that he knew how to handle money, how to wash
his laundry, how to change the oil in the car, and how to write a thank-you
note in longhand. Tree needed to be helpful, kind and responsible. He also must
be hardworking, determined, and principled. Coach Poule was free to enjoy Tree
as a high school hero, a star athlete. It was Piney’s job to make sure those
accolades were not going to be the sum total definition of his son.
With such a father, it’s no wonder Tree thinks of Piney as he
does. “You don’t want me to end up like you. I have to tell you, that’s
always been kind of weird to me. I hope I end up like you. In
fact, that’s the one goal that I’m really sure about. I want to be as much like
you as possible.” And their
relationship has enough problems to keep things real. There’s believability,
humor, and a bit of role reversal when Tree discovers the truth of his father’s
relationship with Jesse.
Aunt Will is the richest character and the pivotal one. All the
other characters are connected to her. She has the credible humanness of the
other characters, but she is also an almost mythic figure in her wisdom and in
the mystical power some believe her to possess. Her utterances at times have an
epigrammatic quality.
“It’s a point
of wisdom to know that life is always going to feel like an uphill grade, even
now when you’re on the downhill slope.”…… “It’s best to live in the here and
now. . . .”
“And wring all the happiness you can find out
of what you have.”
When the doctor,
concerned about Aunt Will’s health, urges her to treat her body like spun
glass, she laughs and tells him she’s never been spun glass. “I’m more the
galvanized wash bucket kind of gal,” she says. I’d say she’s pure gold, and the
best part of Pamela Morsi’s new book.
Morsi writes quiet
books, and their sensuality level is mild. If you limit your romance reading to
high adventure and scorching heat, The Lovesick Cure is not for you. But
if you like your characters warm and real with a convincing mix of flaws,
foibles, and genuine goodness and your fictional worlds similar to something
you might find around a few twists in the road or halfway up a mountain, you
will enjoy this book. It’s not the best Morsi has written. It lacks the
catch-in-the-throat, punch-in-the-heart quality of some of her most highly
praised books, but it is a very good book and one I definitely recommend.
I admit to an
abiding affection for quiet books. How do you feel about them? Do you prefer
books in which big things happen at dependable intervals?
