WONDER WORKER

This is the first of the 3 novels of the St Benet's series. It also has the title Question of Integrity. The title Wonder Worker refers to Nick Darrow, who is seen as a brilliant priest, skilled at working with the physically and mentally ill. He is in his forties, happily married with 2 sons and a beautiful successful wife. Then Alice Fletcher appears at the Healing centre. She is not well off, she is also fat and plain and struggling with life. She has been nursing her elderly great aunt, Beatrice, who has been a teacher and who brought her up when her parents' marriage broke up. She feels loyalty towards her aunt and has promised her she will look after her until she dies and that she won't die in a hospital. Her aunt is dying slowly after a stroke, and Alice can't get a job as a cook which is her profession which will help her to pay for care. She also is very shy and conscious of her plainness and as a result has no friends to help. Nicholas meets Alice at his church, where she has taken shelter when it was raining, and stumbled on a healing service. He and his co worker, a doctor called Valerie Fredericks, offer her support while she's caring for her aunt. After her aunt's death, Alice loses her little house in Westminster where her aunt had a tenancy. Nicholas suggests she looks for a job as a live in cook in upper class Belgravia. She becomes cook housekeeper to Lady Cynthia Aysgarth (daughter in law of Neville Aysgarth of the Starbridge novels) and moves into her home. Lady Cynthia is kind to her but Alice still struggles to lose weight. She is not unhappy but she does not make any new friends. Then Cynthia meets an American and decides to marry him and move away and Alice is homeless again. Cynthia, on her marriage, makes a generous donation to the Healing centre and enables them to hire a live in cook. Alice gets the job. However, she finds that while she likes working there, and fits in better, things are not as rosy as they seem. Lewis Hall loses his ex wife (he is divorced) and this leaves him free to remarry, but he knows that he's not really very good with women, and that perhaps he is not designed for married life. His ex wife was an alcoholic and then died of a heart attack. Nicholas finds that his perfect marriage is in trouble. His wife Rosalind has never shared his interest in church work or healing, and is a busy businesswoman with a floral consultancy. She rather dislikes his being involved in the paranormal and also the "lame ducks" that he meets in his ministry. She lives near London, in a country cottage called Butterfold farm. Nick visits her at weekends, but she is starting to get fed up with being alone all week and a husband who does not share her interests. Nick also does not realise that Stacy, the young Liverpool Irish curate who lives with him and Lewis, is getting more and more unstable and isn't really suited to the priesthood or the ministry of healing. Stacy had an affair with an older man, and is confused about his sexuality. M/F