Deep in the Valley

This is an amazing book that keeps you interested so much that you don't want to put the book down. Robyn Carr is one of my favorite authors that keeps your interest from page-to-page.

This was a very good intro to the rest of the Grace Valley series. Dr. June Hudson is a town unto herself almost. So much spousal abuse. Would have liked to see her match up with someone more accessable as she deserves some happiness after all the work hours she puts in. She has her emergency room in her Jeep. Always on call, her work is her life, the town her extended family. I am writing this after reading the whole trilogy and you should read this before reading the others. It is a very heartwarming series and well worth reading.

DEEP IN THE VALLEY shares the day to day happenings of the Grace Valley inhabitants who can count among their townsfolk those who are loopily odd and charmingly eccentric, those who are pillars of the community and irreplaceable, and those who are bottom-of-the-barrel bad, so bad even prayer is wasted on them. One gets the feeling that Robyn Carr placed each of these characters on a tiny square town map that she created, then shuffled them around like chess pieces until they fell into their comfort zones. They operate as fluidly.June Hudson is thirty seven, single, and Grace Valley's general practitioner. The alarm on her biological clock is a tick away from shrieking and she knows that if she is to have a child she has to do something about it now. But in this town where everyone knows every blessed thing June doubts that her dreams will ever bear fruit. Because it is a known fact that if you live and work in Grace Valley you needed to have picked out your husband way back in the ninth grade. June didn't. Dumb, dumber, dumbest. Now she is overworked, underpaid, and time is galloping past so fast it is like witnessing the wind from the interior of a vacuum pack. Sam owns the gas station a block from the town center. His priorities are clearly flagged -- when he is not fishing Sam is happy to pump gas. Sam is seventy if he is a day, with a body like a seventeen year old and eyes that Paul Newman would gouge for. Justine, twenty-something, is the town florist who provides flowers for the church. Busy-bodies in town have her supplying more than flowers for the local minister, a randy devil whose sexual exploits are legendary. As are his wife's instincts for sniffing young ladies out of the presbytery. Sam, after a couple of chapters guffawing at the situation, starts to look out for Justine: creating new May-December fodder for the gossips. Myrna, June's elderly aunt, lives in a large gothic home on the edge of town. Myrna writes mystery. A while back, Myrna was married to a philandering travelling salesman, but somewhere en route she 'misplaced' her man. Since then her tales have become more ghoulish, more gory and themes of dismemberment and buried body parts are common. Locals speculate over coffee that Myrna's real life story is just as grizzly as her fiction. Myrna's character alone is worth the price of this book. Such a chortle!Way back, hiding deep and dark in the national forest live the Mull family. The Mulls will break your heart. Clarence, a Vietnam vet, suffers from PTS. As a child his wife was slashed and bears a deforming scar down her cheek, but a larger scar undermines her psyche. Terrified, they live as isolates, which is what they seem to need. But they have kids and they know this is not good. Teenagers. Who need a place in society. Up there on Trinity Alps if you listen carefully you can hear the DEA helicopters searching out marijuana plantation sites even on the quietest night. And sometimes sufferers of drug war wounds furtiv

In her late thirties in Grace Valley, California, Dr. June Hudson wonders if she will ever find a lasting relationship. She would like something similar to that shared between her dad and her mom who died nine years ago. Even as she speculates that no one is available for her, June interviews a new doctor, John Stone, to share the overwhelming workload, but he has a past that makes him seem shaky.Beneath the surface of the small Mendocino County town lies different extremes of sexual harassment. Gus Craven is physically and mentally abusive towards his wife and children. Gary Baker not only hits his spouse Christina, he demands she remain model thin even though she carries his baby. Even the married pastor makes plays for females and has had affairs. Can June and company idly sit by while her gender is under attack? She is also beginning to fall in love with an undercover Drug Enforcement Agent.DEEP IN THE VALLEY is a complex look inside relationships in an isolated small Northern California town. The story line is enjoyable yet scary because the large cast of charcaters seems genuine. Although the ending lessons the impact of the problems of spousal and child abuse, and the need to bring medical attention to remote areas, the plot works because fans care about the vast ensemble. Robyn Carr provides readers a powerful, thought-provoking work of contemporary fiction that centers on some members of our population living their lives under constant terrorist activity.Harriet Klausner

What a wonderful, wonderful book!!! The storyline is totally unexpected--heartwarming, honest, and caring. You'll wish that Grace Valley was a real place and that you could live there.