Rolling Toward Clear Skies

Prolific and popular novelist Hyde (Life, Loss, and Puffins) produces another emotional roller coaster with the story of workaholic doctor Maggie Blount, whose two daughters object to her frequent mercy missions to the scenes of natural disasters with her charity, Doctors on Wheels. The family is stretched to the breaking point when Maggie and her live-in boyfriend, Alex, return from the site of a deadly hurricane in Louisiana and bring with them two orphaned teenagers, Jean and Rose, about the same age as her daughters. The new family dynamic is complicated, and Maggie’s biological daughters, Willa and Gemma, harbor lingering resentments about their parents’ divorce and their feelings of being replaced by two new girls. Domestic discord grows as Maggie shows little sympathy for her biological daughters and uses work to bury her own feelings about her divorce and her parenting. A television reporter does a series of human-interest interviews about Maggie’s charity and the blended family. Maggie’s biological daughters, who often come across as selfish, are bullied online, but their adopted sisters defend them, and a new family dynamic forms, still complicated but hopeful.