The Law of Similars: A Novel - Hardcover

Bohjalian, Chris

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0517705869 ISBN 13: 9780517705865

Publisher: Harmony, 1999

Synopsis

From the best-selling author of Midwives comes a startlingly powerful story of three people whose lives are irrevocably changed by illness, healing, and love.  

Two years after his wife's sudden, accidental death, a Vermont deputy state prosecutor, Leland Fowler, finds that the stress of raising their small daughter alone has left him with a chronic sore throat. Desperate to rid himself of a malady that has somehow managed to elude conventional medicine, Leland turns to homeopath Carissa Lake--who cures both his sore throat and the aching loneliness at the root of his symptoms.
        
Just days after Leland realizes he has fallen in love with the first woman who has mattered to him since his wife, one of Carissa's asthma patients falls into an allergy-induced coma. When Carissa comes under investigation, straight-arrow Leland is faced with a moral and ethical dilemma of enormous proportions.

Set against the ongoing clash between conventional and alternative medicine--between what we know science can offer and the miracles that always seem to be just beyond our reach--The Law of Similars is a  haunting and deeply atmospheric tale.
        
Chris Bohjalian is known for the compassion and grace that mark his characters as well as for the sheer storytelling power that propels his fiction. With The Law of Similars, he has offered something more: a page-turning examination of the fragile threads that hold people together when the worst that can happen really does...and the unexpected and luminous ways we are made well. It is a remarkable achievement.

About this title

Review

In Chris Bohjalian's fine follow-up to Midwives, individual judgment and the unconventional again clash with the medical and legal forces of tradition. In rural Vermont, two years after his wife's sudden death, an exhausted state's attorney can hope for little but a quiet life with his 4-year-old daughter. Leland Fowler's only goal is a cure for the common cold--his own, that is, which has dragged on for months. As it turns out, his appointment with the town's only homeopath will set to rights his physical and emotional symptoms. At least for a while.

Alas, another of Carissa Lake's patients isn't quite so lucky. Despite her warning that Richard Emmons not go off his prescription drugs, he does exactly that. In fact, during an asthma attack, he takes the homeopathic law of similars--the belief that "like cures like"--to an entirely new level. This tragedy embroils Carissa in an investigation of her practice and forces Leland into a decision that is to alter not only her life but his:

Upstairs, my daughter slept. And for a long time we sat on the floor before the tree, neither of us saying a word, as I worked out in my mind exactly what I would have needed to prosecute this case if a summer cold had not lasted into the fall, and I had not met Carissa Lake. Once I knew, nothing seemed quite so hopeless, and I began to sketch aloud for her exactly what we would want to create in the morning, and exactly what we would want to destroy.

Chris Bohjalian is an artist of the small but seismic instant. As this gripping novel proves, he knows all too well the awful daring of a moment's surrender. --Siobhan Carson

From the Back Cover

"A fast, fascinating read...."--Denver Post

"Bohjalian seems to have hit his literary stride with Leland Fowler, whose voice is intimate, credible, and sure in illuminating the shadows of his soul.... Once opened, The Law of Similars is a hard book to put down."--The Boston Globe

"Bohjalian [has] a distinctive narrative voice, [an] artful hand with dialogue, and [a] disarming gift for taking the reader into his confidence."--Vermont Sunday Magazine

Praise for Midwives:

"A writer of unusual heart."--The Boston Globe

"This skillfully constructed, fast-paced novel is not only beautifully written but also as hard to put down as any old-fashioned thriller.... This astonishing story will keep readers up late at night until the last page is turned."--Washington Post Book World

"Superbly crafted and astonishingly powerful.... It will thrill readers who cherish their worn copies of To Kill a Mockingbird."--People

"A treasure.... It is a rare pleasure when a finely written novel also grips us with sheer storytelling power."--Portland Oregonian

About this edition

• Publisher: Harmony
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0517705869
• ISBN 13: 9780517705865
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 275