An illicit romance generates a whirlwind of trouble for a seemingly cursed couple in Coles’ (Sister Carrie, 2016, etc.) novel.

Mike Boudreaux is the chief of surgery at one of the largest hospitals on the country. His mentor, the eminent Clayton Otherson, becomes increasingly unreliable in the operating room, attracting the anxious attention of his colleagues. Clayton has also become fixated on performing bariatric surgeries for obese patients; these are spectacularly profitable for the department but gratuitously dangerous. Many of Clayton’s peers call for his termination, others defend him on financial grounds, and Mike struggles to walk a delicate line between personal loyalty and professional ethics. However, Clayton finally loses a patient due to his recklessness, essentially ending his career. Irrationally, he blames his misfortune on what he perceives as Mike’s betrayal—a misconception that’s reinforced when Mike and Clayton’s wife, Catherine, fall in love and begin a clandestine affair. Clayton angrily decides to sue to restore his position at the hospital, using Mike’s involvement with his wife as evidence of personal bias. Catherine loses nearly everything, including her seat on the board of the local Historical Society, and her teenage daughter disappears. Michael and Catherine fight to maintain their relationship, but the strain of the divorce, and the scornful disapprobation of the public, may tear them apart. Coles artfully limns the tension between personal and professional obligations and the crushing demands that prominent careers can make on private lives. However, although Catherine’s disenchantment with her marriage makes perfect sense, her pronouncement of love for Mike seems to come out of nowhere; it seems as ungrounded as adolescent infatuation. Mike’s emotional reciprocity is equally confusing. The author builds the drama toward an explosive crescendo that’s both surprising and thrilling—but it’s also one that also makes the love between Mike and Catherine seem even more implausible. Still, Clayton’s professional downfall is expertly rendered even if the love affair, upon which the story hinges, isn’t nearly as persuasive.

A solid medical drama upended by an unsteady romantic plotline.

A wide-ranging volume offers a collection of short stories and a novella. 

Coles (Sister Carrie, 2016, etc.) seems drawn to epiphanies begotten from moral crisis, a theme that permeates this assemblage of 33 tales and a novella, well under 100 pages. In the first story, “The Gift,” a 17-year-old girl, Catherine, becomes pregnant and is sent by her furious mother to a convent in France to deliver the child and then give it up for adoption. The baby is born without feet, but Catherine loves her deeply anyway, teaching her the difference between a disability and a blessing. In “The Necklace,” an unmarried couple struggles to figure out their future while they travel in India, but when they see tragedy befall another pair, they fully realize the depth of their love for each other. Some of the stories are so short they’re impressionistic and pull the reader into what seems like a dramatic narrative already in progress. For example, “The Bear” is two pages and details the outpouring of gratitude a man feels for life after he narrowly escapes death. Many of the tales confront a conundrum, inviting readers to draw their own conclusions. In “Dilemma,” a surgeon’s son shoots himself in an attempted suicide, and the physician has to decide if it’s either cruel or loving to try to save him, given the irreparable damage he has done to himself. The book concludes with a novella that dramatizes the love a teenage girl has for an Iranian boy possibly mixed up in terrorist activity. Cole’s compilation is as artistically ambitious as it is eclectic—one of the stories is set in France during its Revolutionary era. In addition, the author’s moral explorations are courageously unflinching and don’t shy away from either controversial or macabre subject matter. But these ethical studies can cross a line into sermonizing and read like overly didactic parables meant to impart heavy-handed lessons. Furthermore, the prose can be underwhelming: “Despite our lack-of-a-forever-marriage commitment, Helen and I were intimate good buddies, and we leveled our friendship canoe pretty well by stroking carefully in unison on opposite sides.”

Realistically gritty and morally astute, these tales can also feel overly instructional. 

A novel follows a surgeon who possesses all the material comforts anyone could want, but harbors a deep lacking in his soul.  

When readers first meet Hiram McDowell, he is leaving a hiking partner for dead and trying to make it back down a mountain in Nepal in 1981. It’s hard to judge if McDowell is simply callous and cruel or whether this is an issue of survival. Everything readers learn about him in the next few chapters, though, shows he is a pig who treats women like objects and deceives his third wife, Carole Mastriano. He’s also power-hungry, cheating a colleague, Michael O’Leary, out of a post on his way to becoming president of the International College of Surgeons. The one soft spot he has is for his three kids: Billie, who gets in trouble with one of Carole’s daughters; Ann, who copes with a turbulent marriage and mean children; and Sophie, who seeks to find her professional footing as a photographer. The tales start to converge when Paige Sterling, a journalist in her 50s fighting sexism at her network to keep her job, is assigned to cover McDowell’s story. Tragedy befalls the family when Ann’s son Jeremy goes on a killing spree, which leads to McDowell’s ultimate downfall when he is convicted of murdering the culprit in his hospital bed. McDowell escapes from prison and begins an unlikely association with a bookstore owner named Maud and her family. That gives him a chance at spiritual redemption while Sterling and the police try to hunt him down. Coles (Sister Carrie, 2016, etc.) has a knack for creating distinct characters. From McDowell to the members of Sterling’s crew in Nepal, they all have their own personalities. No player is wasted as a mere plot device. The author also expertly weaves together varied threads, though there are certain points where the story jumps forward past important action. But Billie revealing his indiscretions and his desire to be an artist; Sophie struggling to find herself after her partner is murdered; Ann navigating her marriage; and Sterling using unexpected opportunities all dovetail well with McDowell’s arc.

This worthy tale delivers an epic feel and strong characters.

A coming-of-age story reveals a smart and strong-willed teen becoming a man in a new and unfamiliar environment.

At the beginning of this novel, Darwin Hastings is on a flight to New York from Pittsburgh to live with his football star cousin Luther Pinnelli. Darwin’s parents died years before, and his aunt can no longer take care of him. He’s ambitious and wants to study medicine after graduating from private school. His plans get muddled when he moves in with Luther, a self-serving celebrity who thinks he’s doing right by Darwin by denying him basic luxuries, making him live in a storage room on his estate, and denying him easy access to the money his parents left him. Darwin is able to overcome just about every obstacle with his keen intellect and genuine empathy for people. It gives him allies in the house, including Luther’s eccentric grandmother, house manager Mrs. Thomas, head of security Laszlo Forgash, and Luther’s girlfriend, Sweeney Pale. He meets Dr. Adrian Malverne on the plane and befriends his family, including two daughters, Helen and Coral. Darwin’s life in New York does not lack for adventure. Laszlo becomes a father figure, teaching Darwin how to drive and other basic life skills. Granny and Mrs. Thomas look out for him when Luther is neglectful. Luther is a philanderer with a gambling problem, which puts him in physical danger at one point during the story. Darwin must navigate all of this, including his friendship with Sweeney, while avoiding his cousin’s problems, getting into medical school, and figuring out his romantic life. Coles (Sister Carrie, 2016, etc.) offers an engrossing story in the first half that shows Darwin finding his place in a world that was set to reject him from the start. There is a strong dynamic between him and the other characters in the house, especially as Darwin’s integrity keeps him—and sometimes everyone around him—in line. That fades severely in the second part when the tale focuses more on Darwin’s relationships with women and a twist involving a murder mystery. Established storylines are unfortunately ignored. The most engaging element is watching these core players bounce off one another, and they do much less of that in the second half.

An exhilarating family tale when concentrating on the main characters, but the relationship fireworks and intrigue feel ordinary.