Mercy
Heron, a nurse and author of the nonfiction bestseller Intensive Care , cobbles together a lumpy, unevenly written novel from disparate elements of New Age mysticism, creepy thrillers and standard romantic yarns. Red-haired heroine Cat Richardson is a deliberately daffy, self-confessed "Sister of Masochism"--a nurse, that is--at San Francisco's Mercy Hospital, where she gives her superiors plenty of grief and her patients enormous support. Entrusted to her care are Corky, a suicidal adolescent, and Lucy Cross, a gifted artist viciously beaten by her boyfriend, a tormented male model. A blind newsseller named Gage who possesses "the sight" knows that Cat has power she isn't tapping. As her spiritual guide, Gage eggs her on toward danger and romance with the cop investigating the Cross case. ("You wear the haunted look of someone who has stared the beast in the face and survived," that swain observes.) There's a creative, rough-edged charm to the cheerfully obscene repartee between Cat and best friend Nora, but the heavy-handed psychological motives fueling the action owe a lot to bestsellers from the thriving recovery industry. BOMC alternate.Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.