Story for the Week
I love a good medical drama…or comedy…or psychological thriller…or, well any genre really.
Probably the earliest medical show I watched (and I’m dating myself here) was Emergency!, starring Randolph Mantooth and Kevin Tighe as paramedics John Gage and Roy DeSoto. Based in Los Angeles County, it had everything my six- to nine-year-old brain could desire. John and Roy as partners made me laugh. And there was the excitement of the rescues and the medical jargon: “51, start an IV D5W TKO”…or something like that.
You never saw blood, and characters didn’t die on screen (it was the 1970s). But it was a great show to watch with my dad. Emergency! led me to Quincy, M.E. and M*A*S*H. The 1980s brought Trapper John, M.D.; St. Elsewhere; and Doogie Howser, M.D.
By the 1990s, networks knew that medical shows would be a hit. With so many to choose from, I survived on E.R. (the hour-long drama, not the half-hour comedy); Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman; China Beach; Northern Exposure; Chicago Hope. And we ferried into the 21st century with Grey’s Anatomy (see what I did there?); Private Practice; Royal Pains; and House.
I have not yet watched New Amsterdam, Chicago Med, or The Good Doctor despite the amazing reviews, because…well, I don’t have enough room in my schedule. Between all the medical shows combined with the police procedurals (What Do We Have on the DVR?), reality TV (Confessions of a Reality TV Jgunkie), and binge-watching iCarly with Corinne, I still have to find time to work and eat and read and blog and maybe sleep. Maybe during the writer’s strike….
Of course, we can’t ignore movies with a medical tie-in. Patch Adams, starring the incredible Robin Williams; the thriller Outbreak; the heart-breaking John Q, one of my favorites City of Angels, just to name a few. (If you haven’t seen them, you should.)
One that I have always remembered came out in 1989. Gross Anatomy starred Matthew Modine and Daphne Zuniga as medical students Joe and Laurie and Christine Lahti as their gross anatomy professor Dr. Woodruff. The movie followed the students through a year of med school with Joe not trying hard at all and Laurie avoiding all thoughts of a relationship.
Joe could be the star student if he cared, and Dr. Woodruff tries to instill in him the importance of empathy. She wants him to want to be as good as she knows he can be. Over the course of the school year, she challenges the class with an anonymous patient requiring a diagnosis, which turns out to be lupus.
I won’t tell you the rest of the movie. Lupus is a long-term autoimmune disease without a cure, so you can imagine the movie would be pretty emotional. It’s more than 30 years old and totally worth the watch.
Lupus plays a key role in the book reviewed in this post. It almost ended up with a lower rating, but it’s a prime case of being one of the reasons I will always finish a book. Just like the movie Gross Anatomy, the book’s ending might just surprise you.
Book Review
⭐⭐⭐½
3.5 Stars for The Senator’s Wife by Liv Constantine
305 pages
Publisher: Bantam
Publication Date: May 23, 2023
The Creepy Book Club selection for June 2023, purchased on Amazon.
Publisher’s Description
In this town, anyone is replaceable….
After a tragic chain of events led to the deaths of their spouses two years ago, D.C. philanthropist Sloane Chase and Senator Whit Montgomery are finally starting to move on. The horrifying ordeal drew them together, and now they’re ready to settle down again—with each other.
As Sloane returns to the world of White House dinners and political small talk, this time with her new husband, she’s also preparing for an upcoming hip replacement—the latest reminder of the lupus she’s managed since her twenties. With their hectic schedules, they decide that hiring a home health aide will give Sloane the support and independence she needs postsurgery. And they find the perfect fit in Athena Karras.
Seemingly a godsend, Athena tends to Sloane and even helps her run her charitable foundation. But Sloane slowly begins to deteriorate—a complication, Athena explains, of Sloane’s lupus. As weeks go by, Sloane becomes sicker, and her uncertainty quickly turns to paranoia as she begins to suspect the worst. Why is Athena asking her so many probing questions about her foundation—as well as about her past? And could Sloane be imagining the sultry looks between Athena and her new husband?
************
Main Characters:
- Sloane Chase – 48-year-old widow of Senator Robert Chase, who she had been married to for 24 years. She and Robert grew up in wealthy families, and they started the Emerson-Chase foundation that Sloane runs in support of domestic violence shelters. Diagnosed with lupus in her early 20s and needs a hip replacement partially due to all the steroids she has required during lupus flares. Recently married Senator Whit Montgomery about a year after both of their spouses were killed.
- Senator Whit Montgomery – widower of Peg, who was Robert Chase’s younger cousin. Peg suspected him of cheating. Did not grow up in a wealthy family, but his charisma and move-star good looks have taken him far in politics.
- Madelyn Sawyer – 49-year-old wife to Fred, suspected to have married for money, very interested in Whit. Her 80-year-old billionaire husband is one of Whit’s primary financial backers, and she uses that to manipulate Whit
- Athena Karras – home health aide hired by Sloane and Whit to help Sloane after her hip replacement both at home monitoring her rehabilitation and medication as well as administratively at the foundation
- Rosemary Chase – Robert’s mother, Sloane’s former mother-in-law, has her own suspicions about Whit’s fidelity and disapproves of Sloane moving on only two years after Robert’s death
- Camille Chase – Sloane’s best friend and Robert’s younger sister
- Emmy Chase – Sloane and Robert’s daughter who recently took a job on the West Coast
Like any good political thriller, The Senator’s Wife contains a large cast of major and minor characters and a lot of suspicion about their intentions. At the center of it all, we have Sloane Chase, who recently married Senator Whit Montgomery after they both lost their spouses in a tragic shooting.
Everyone seems to love Sloane. She plays the role of political wife extremely well, has money of her own, and runs a foundation that helps fight domestic violence. What’s not to love? Diagnosed with lupus in her early 20s though, Sloane may have it all in terms of wealth and happiness, but she certainly drew the short straw in the health department.
Whit is the doting husband, ensuring that Sloane has all the help and care that she needs. He spends a lot of time away from home dealing with Washington politics…and fighting off the advances of Madelyn Sawyer. He can’t push too hard, though, because he needs Fred Sawyer’s financial backing, so keeping Madelyn at a distance proves challenging.
Enter Athena…home health aide hired to help Sloane rehab after hip replacement surgery. We know from the very beginning that’s not really why Athena takes the job, but we don’t know what her end goal is. At times, she seems to truly care about Sloane, and at other times, she seems suspect, especially as Sloane gets increasingly sicker from a lupus flare after her surgery.
My first book by this author, I appreciated the suspense. There are plenty of plot elements thrown in to make you wonder whose motives are good, bad, or otherwise. And I won’t say anything to give away the twist at the end, which the author did a really good job of concealing. The twist was what boosted the rating up half a star.
The storyline itself was a bit slow-paced for me. I thought the multiple third-person point of view style was unusual. The POV moved primarily between Sloane, Whit, and Athena, with some scattered chapters from Rosemary, but I found it odd that everything was in the third person. Based on the ending, first-person narrative would have given too much away, but then just write the whole book in the third person and mark the chapters by date as opposed to person. It was just odd.
I also wasn’t crazy about the way the author worked character descriptions into the story. The writing seemed formal and stilted, which added to the slow pace. For example, Rosemary’s first chapter included way too much formal description over two pages.
- “An avid tennis player, gardener, and sailor, she was in good shape….”
- “This was her favorite room in the immense house she and her late husband, Chapman, had bought in McLean, Virginia, over fifty years ago, when Robert was only nine and Camille a baby.”
- “Despite grieving over the loss of her only son, Robert, Rosemary was able to find joy in the company of her daughter, Camille, to whom she’d always been close. And Sloane, her daughter-in-law—she would never think of her as anything else—kept in close contact with her as well. And then there was her beloved granddaughter, Emmy, the apple of her eye, on whom Rosemary had always doted.”
All in all, this was an okay read with a great twist.
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