Tara’s Healing

Taraas Healing, first published in 1951, is Janice Holt Giles's third novel and the last of her Kentucky Mountain trilogy, which includes The Enduring Hills and Miss Willie. Readers will find themselves on Piney Ridge again with Hod and Mary Pierce and their neighbors. This is the story of Tara Cochrane, who had been Hod's captain during World War II. Tara had returned from Europe to study medicine and start a practice, only to collapse with a severe nervous breakdown. Hod finds him in the hospital, scarcely recognizable as the tough commander who had slogged it out beside his men through France, Germany, and Austria. When the time comes for Hod to leave the hospital, he persuades Tara to go with him in the hope that the peace of the hill country will effect a cure where medicine has failed.