Sweet Everlasting

June 28, 1993
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.