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The Healer's Heart    by Diane M. Komp Amazon.com order for
Healer's Heart
by Diane M. Komp
Order:  USA  Can
WaterBrook Press, 2006 (2006)
Paperback
* * *   Reviewed by Pat Elliott

Luke and Theo Tayspill have problems. After her trip to Sarejevo, Theo, a journalist, is haunted by memories and secrets she dares not share with her husband. As their marriage crumbles, Luke is called home to make important decisions about his father's health.

Looking for his father's living will, Luke finds a manuscript written by his grandfather Giles Tayspill entitled 'The Deaths of Lucas Tayspill'. Looking back over his father's ancestors he realizes that the first two Lucas Tayspills were Quakers who died as martyrs. The manuscript ends when the third character, Dr. Lucas Tayspill arrives in Africa.

The protagonist, Dr. Lucas Tayspill, is currently chief of the AIDS Care Program at Yale. He remembers his grandfather frequently referring to him as having a healing heart. But he cannot understand why Grandfather Giles wrote of death instead of life. Was Grandfather Giles foretelling Luke's own death?

Luke is deeply troubled. His curiosity takes him on a fact finding journey to the low country of St. Helena Island. His heart takes him on a mission to London and Sierra Leone. Love calls him back to his wife, and her friends involve him in adventures he never thought possible. God opens his heart to the many questions he did not know to ask before reading 'The Deaths of Lucas Tayspill'.

This is a unique book, involving the reader in life situations between husband and wife, father and son, white and black, past and present, God and man. I highly recommend The Healer's Heart.

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