WONDER WORKER

This is the first of the 3 novels, 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. His life seems charmed. 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, who has been a teacher and who brought her up when her parents' marriage broke up. She feels a great loyalty towards her aunt and has promised her she will look after her till she dies and that she wont 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 house in Westminster where her aunt had a tenancy, and 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 she has trouble losing weight and does not make any new friends. Then her employer meets an American and decides to marry him and move away and Alice is homeless again. Cynthia makes a generous donation to the Healing centre and enables them to hire a live in cook and 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 on the surface. 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. Nicholas finds that his perfect marriage is in trouble. Nick's wife 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 in a country house and Nick visits her at weeekend 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. M/F