The Moonlight Healers
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A powerful debut with a magical twist about one woman’s discovery of her family’s secret healing abilities—they can bring people back to life—and the mysterious consequences she must contend with when she uses them on someone she loves. “A profound tale of love, family legacy, secrets, and the extraordinary power within us all.... A deeply felt debut.” —PATTI CALLAHAN HENRY New York Times bestselling author of The Secret Book of Flora Lea For generations, the Winston women have possessed an unspoken magical gift: they can heal with the touch of a hand. It’s a tradition they’ve always had to practice in secret, in the moonlight hours, when the fireflies dance and the whippoorwill birds sing. But not every healer has rightfully passed on this knowledge to her descendants, and for young Louise Winston, the discovery of her abilities comes in less-than-ideal circumstances—she brings her best friend back from death following an accident, the day after he professed his long-held feelings for her, five days before she’s supposed to move away. Desperate for answers, and to avoid this new reality between them, Louise escapes to her grandmother’s lush Appalachian orchard. There, she uncovers her family’s hidden history in a tattered journal, stemming back to her brave great-grandmother who illicitly healed Allied soldiers in war-torn France. But just as Louise begins to embrace her unique legacy, she learns that it can also come with a mysterious cost. And with a life hanging in the balance, she’ll be forced to make the most impossible of choices… Spanning eighty years, The Moonlight Healers is a deeply empathetic, heartfelt novel about mothers and daughters, life and death, and the beautiful resilience of love.
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This book is a lot of things: historical fiction, a well-executed dual timeline narrative, a little bit of magical realism, a family drama. And it comes together beautifully!
The timeline switches between modern day Virginia and WWII era occupied France. In the modern day, Louise learns her family's secret in a very dramatic way. Helene's (Louise's great-grandmother) timeline fleshes out that secret as she trains as a nurse while under Nazi occupation.
There's a little bit of a plot twist at the end, which I knew existed from other reviews, and had been trying to predict throughout my reading of the book. I never figured it out, but it fits just perfectly with the whole story!
Overall, the book is both an entertaining story and an appreciation of nurses & healers, mothers & daughters, and all women. It honors those who "aren't afraid to sing in the darkness."
Contains spoilers
I sort of thought the "secret healing powers" would play a more prominent role in a book about, well, healers, but I was surprised at how little it actually had an impact on things.
We have two points of view in this story; Louise in present day, navigating a lifelong friendship-maybe-more with Peter, when a car accident brings Louise's latent healing powers to life. Now she's wondering from her mom and her grandmother why nobody told her, and what this means for herself, her future, and Peter going forward. We also have Helene in WWII France, Louise's great-grandmother, also navigating the complexities of her healing powers as they conflict with the religious school she attends. When a battle brings her to the side of a wounded allied soldier, Helene has to decide where to draw the line when she learns that everything has a cost.
This is very much a women's fiction story with some magical realism elements. The healing aspect comes up frequently, but still manages to take a back seat to Louise's family drama and Helene's struggles within her religious school. Which, while fine, made this more of a fluffy read than I was expecting. I also thought that, despite the two POVs being from the same family, there was very little overlap, making this feel more like two separate stories than two halves of a whole.
There's some good discussions here about caregiving and end of life decisions, but because of the author's nursing background, it felt almost like the author was talking to the reader directly in parts, almost clinical. It was a little distracting to go from the flat writing about the characters to in-depth, clinical terms and concepts regarding healthcare and death.
The healing is also the worst-kept secret on the planet, because the insistence from the family to keep it a secret is at odds with the fact that it felt like everyone else around the main characters knew about it already. Ending spoilers here: I'm not sure why Louise lied to Peter so much during the story about her powers and what happened during the accident, when everyone in their small town basically knew about them anyway. What's one more person? It would have alleviated a lot of Louise's problems.
If you're looking for a general fiction book about family troubles, this may be your jam. If you read the synopsis and were intrigued by the healing powers, maybe give it a pass.
