Elizabeth Sinclair Miracle in the Mist

Miracle in the Mist

Elizabeth Sinclair

Medallion, Dec 2005, $6.99, 300 pp.

ISBN: 1932815651

At St. Francis Hospital in NYC pediatric oncologist Dr. Steve Cameron usually buries his feelings towards his terminally ill young patients. However, thirteen years old Ellie Stanton has reached deeper than anyone has ever before her when she whispers Merry Christmas, gives him a present, and thanks him for giving her love. Suffering from battle fatigue syndrome Steve goes on hiatus seeking a miracle, but Ellie died anyway.

Six years later in Central Park, Irma the bag lady tells Steve to go to a cabin in Hudson Highlands near Tarrytown, New York to find what he seeks as she insists she found her miracle there. One look at her and Steve figures what a poor miracle, but he needs to get away to ponder his future so this remote spot is as good as any. The cabin is a portal to Renaissance, a village where those with crushed souls mend. Steve meets Meghan Peece and they fall in love. However his juvenile patients need him; while she fears leaving her village because she will not remember her beloved once Renaissance vanishes into the mists during the Transition.

Elizabeth Sinclair brings Brigadoon with a pinch of Shangri-La into the twenty-first century in an engaging romantic fantasy that has an underlying tone of sadness involving children with terminal illness. The story line focuses on how people cope with tragedy especially when bad things happen to good people. Readers will commiserate with Steve as he struggles to cope with seeing his charges die while Meghan has deep rooted fears of leaving beyond losing her memory of the village and her soulmate that will touch the audience. The support cast augments this fine tale that readers will appreciate.

Harriet Klausner