Cottonwood Place

Sandy Wickersham-McWhorter is a new author for me.  Cottonwood Place was an intriguing book on the description provided on NetGalley.com's site, so I requested to read it for review. At first, I found the narrative to be a bit shallow for the depth of issues in the book, but as I got into it, I found that the author had provided significant weight to the problems of the characters. 

Ian Hunter is a doctor who fought a malpractice suit and won it, but still had his insurance premiums rise to prohibitive amounts.  He could not get past the death of the hemophiliac child, and began drinking to cope with the stress.  His landlord's assistant/niece gave him a brochure for an Inn in Boulder City, Nevada, and the place compelled him to go.  

Megan MacCloud is part Navajo and part Scottish and the manager of Cottonwood Place.  She runs it with her Grandmother Lona, her cat and dog--Cassie and Orion.  She has the capacity to see troubles in people and works to help them resolve them.  Megan was once a practicing nurse who was abused by her late husband and knows how PTSD can influence a person's actions. 

Dreams and their interpretations hold a prominent place in this novel.  The Navajo tenet of being in harmony with the universe and the Great Spirit also play an important part.  

I had a hard time working my way through the dreams and the interpretations, the events that came out of the dreams, and the way the problems in this book are solved. In the end, both Megan and Ian find their purpose and find new ways of life that sustain the Navajo. 

This is a three-ish star book for me, others will give it a higher rating.  It's a matter of taste and frame of mind while I was reading it. 

Pelican Book Group and NetGalley.com provided the copy I read for this review.  All opinion expressed are solely my own.