Danner, Craig Joseph. Himalayan Dhaba, a novel.

Penguin Putnam, Plume. 311p. c2002. 0-452-28387-6. $13.00. SA

Richard Davis, who had worked for two months at Dr. Vikram's hospital, persuades his wife Mary that they should both travel to India to practice medicine. Mary, however, arrives alone at the remote Himalayan village 7000 feet above the plains of Northern India, because Richard had been killed in a hit-and-run accident a little over a year before, and she is still at loose ends. Dr. Vikram is not there to welcome her to the hospital. In fact, he has left her to run the hospital indefinitely because of his father's illness. Mary alternates between feeling totally responsible for the life and death of the village people, and wanting to flee to focus on her own pain. Mary's clients include Phillip, the son of a British diplomat who had rather unsuccessfully taken up the hippie life and ended up with a broken back; Amod, the kind and lonely waiter from the dhaba (cafe), who supplies her with food when she is too tired to eat but who has no joy in his life because of his fears and insecurities; and Antone, a druggie who tries to kidnap Phillip for ransom, not knowing about his injury.

This novel is as much about Mary's recovery from grief as it is about the adventures she has at this remote hospital. Danner, winner of the 2002 Book of the Year Award from the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association, incorporates into the story many of his own experiences as a doctor in Himalayan India in the early 1990s. His sentences seem almost metrical, exhibiting an underlying repetitive beat or pulse. An excellent book for adults and ambitious teens about the struggle to provide adequate medical care in remote areas of the world and about some of the unique ways in which doctor and patients heal each other. Susan G. Allison, Libn., Lewiston H.S., Lewiston, ME