Sweet Everlasting

Shattered by a devastating secret, shy Carrie Wiggins flees from Wayne's Crossings's cruel villagers and sets up house in the mountains, where she encounters handsome Tyler Wilkes, an aristocrat who has also turned his back on society. Original. Read more Continue reading Read less FROM PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Tyler Wilkes, a physician from an affluent Philadelphia family, has bought a practice in small-town Wayne's Crossing. Formerly one of Teddy Roosevelt's Rough Riders, he dreams of becoming an epidemiologist and finding a cure for malaria. Instead, he meets Carrie Wiggins, a mute waif who lives with her abusive and zealously religious stepfather in a small mountain cabin. She shares her "hospital"--a clearing in the woods where she bandages and cares for injured animals--with Tyler, and her naivete enchants him. Carrie communicates by writing in a small notebook until Tyler happens upon her when she is alone and singing one day and discovers that she is capable of speech. Gaffney ( Another Eden ) populates the burg with interesting characters, such as Dr. Stoneman, the curmudgeonly country doctor whose office Tyler has acquired; Mrs. Quick, Tyler's nosy housekeeper; and Broom, a tall, skinny boy who suffers from St. Vitus's Dance. This historical romance is more cerebral than most, but 18-year-old Carrie's childlike innocence is so powerful that it gives the eventual intimacy between her and Tyler an unsettling undercurrent of pedophilia.
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