A Can­dle For Nick by Lorna Michaels was going to be my Decem­ber hol­i­day TBR choice, but I got caught up in other things, so here it is, fresh for 2010. Good thing, because it’s not a holiday-themed book. Yes, the char­ac­ters are light­ing a meno­rah on the cover, and the Har­le­quin Hol­i­day Red Rib­bon™ is there as well, but there was no Chanukah in the story!

Mal­lory Bren­ner is a wid­owed mom who learns that her 10-year-old son Nick has leukemia. Kent Berger is the pedi­atric oncol­o­gist at the hos­pi­tal they go to for treat­ment. Ten years ago, Mal­lory worked at the resort where med­ical stu­dent Kent vaca­tioned, and the two dated, but kept it quiet as it broke the non-fraternization rules of the resort.

Kent left for a med­ical con­fer­ence in Italy and Mal­lory never heard from him again. Mal­lory found out she was preg­nant, and when she couldn’t con­tact Kent, mar­ried Dean, her child­hood friend who was in love with her. When Mal­lory and Kent meet up again, they both face some unre­solved issues: Mal­lory feels she was sim­ply a fling, and Kent feels Mal­lory used him to bring Dean to heel.

Mal­lory and Kent dance around their his­tory and never really talk about it. Nick is treated for leukemia, and Mal­lory is really hop­ing that chemo works because then Nick won’t need a bone mar­row trans­plant. If Nick needs the trans­plant then the truth of his parent­age might come out and Kent will no longer be able to treat Nick. Dur­ing the course of Nick’s treat­ment, Mal­lory and Kent become lovers again, with Mal­lory still with­hold­ing the truth.

Mal­lory joins with the moms of other kids to form an advo­cacy group for marrow-registry aware­ness and plants a gar­den. Kent attends sev­eral med­ical con­fer­ences. Mal­lory finds out why Kent never con­tacted her again. Mallory’s mom reveals that she and Mallory’s dad fig­ured out Kent is Nick’s dad but Dean’s par­ents don’t know.

Mallory’s fam­ily observes Rosh Hashanah, then Yom Kip­pur, and a sud­denly pen­i­tent Mal­lory feels that she needs to tell Kent the truth, but before she can, Kent dis­cov­ers that Nick is his son and also that he’s a donor match. Much anger ensues. Nick takes part in a drug trial and doesn’t need the trans­plant. Kent for­gives Mal­lory and The End.

I wanted to be emo­tion­ally engaged by this book, and I just wasn’t. There was no sense of urgency about Nick’s ill­ness, and the story was just as dry as my review of it. Mal­lory kept the truth from Kent even after know­ing what hap­pened in Italy, and after they became lovers again.

There was no real acknowl­edg­ment that as a doc­tor, Kent should not be involved with the mother of a long-term patient. The years-in-the-future epi­logue acknowl­edges that every­thing wasn’t all ponies and rain­bows after Mal­lory and Kent got mar­ried. They waited to tell Nick that Kent was his bio­log­i­cal father, and after­ward he rejected Kent for a long time, and Dean’s par­ents worked the truth out for them­selves. Grade, C.

There was also a note that while she was writ­ing this book, the author’s hus­band was diag­nosed with the same type of leukemia as Nick and died before it was published.

This review is the first of the TBR2010 Chal­lenge! Please make sure to visit the other par­tic­i­pants! My review will post at 7:00PM CST.