The decision to become a doctor is a big one. First you have to have the smarts and then you have to compete with other men and women who are equally as smart or even brighter. You have to want to do it so badly that you're prepared to move across the country to accept a place at medical school and then have four grueling years of study. When you finally graduate four years later and start and finish your intern years and embark on a specialisation, your student loans are staggering. I read an article that the average doctor in the USA has $400,00 in loans. Holy moley!
America, like Australia, has trouble attracting doctors to rural areas and many area health boards offer incentives to attract physicans, including assistance in writing down student loans. Give them five years of your life and get a financial break. And that is the genesis of the story. But what if you were in a relationship and you'd made sacrifices for your partner's career but that wasn't reciprocated? Where would that leave you? It's exactly where we find Dr. Josh Stanton; dumped, disillusioned and as mad as hell. On top of all that, Bear Paw Montana, population 1500 is like moving to Mars.
I had lots of fun with Josh as he tries to adapt to rural America. I love writing about family because they are so complicated. The McCade family are a ranching family with a love of the land that runs deep. Katrina has been living the big city life in Philadelphia for eight years but she's home now licking her relationship wounds and wondering how she'd missed all the signs that the man she expected to marry was not who he seemed. Back in the heart of her family, she's struggling to be the independent woman she's been for years and she's worried about her mother. The secondary story in this book deals with Katrina's brother, Beau, a strong, monosyllabic cowboy with a secret. I matched him up with a single-mother struggling with her increasingly disconnected fourteen-year-old son. I hope this book makes you laugh and cry and leaves you with the feeling that no matter what we face in life, if we have someone by our side who loves us, things will be okay.
